Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- Finance controller tools are essential for professionals looking for an efficient and compliant financial management.
- However, the controller role is changing rapidly—causing many to wonder how to build their techstack for today and tomorrow’s world.
- There are many tool options for finance controllers to “future-proof” their workflow.
Financial reporters are clear: Their role is changing. According to the 2024 Global EY DNA Financial controller report, 86% of controllers say that their role will change significantly over the next 5 years. In fact, the job description is changing so rapidly, that a quarter stated that they couldn’t identify which skill set would be most helpful for future controllers.
This poses a challenge for the finance department and controllers of today attempting to future-proof their tools and processes. How can you procure tools and implement processes today that will withstand the test of time?
One of the keys is in focusing on more than a single tool. Though finance tools may individually add some value, financial controllers truly excel when they use these tools in combination.
In the book Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing, authors Mary Lacity and Leslie Willcocks adeptly describe the role of tools:
“The value is in the integrated toolkit, not any individual tool."
This integrated toolkit is what often differentiates the best financial controllers from the rest — for today’s world and tomorrow’s. In this piece, we’re going to talk about some of the tools that allow controllers to excel in their work.
How to handle legacy software: Excel and other spreadsheets
One tool that has been important to financial controllers (and auditors) for years is Excel.The spreadsheet program created by Microsoft has offered financial controllers flexibility and reliability for keeping track of the numbers and managing complex calculations.
But the future of this software is questionable moving forward into the automation age.
For example, Adobe’s finance chief Mark Garrett explained that he was working on cutting Excel out of the picture in an interview with the Wall Street Journal:
"I don’t want financial planning people spending their time importing and exporting and manipulating data, I want them to focus on what the data is telling us."
Garrett recognizes that financial controllers can do more than gather data and press buttons that pump out new reports. They can use this information to better understand operations, reduce costs, increase profits and identify strategic opportunities for the company.
For some businesses that’s thousands, or even millions, of transactions a year—and keeping track of it all in Excel can be a nightmare. That is why full-service accounting programs and ERPs have become a financial controller’s best friend.
Full-service accounting software packages combine a variety of accounting processes all into one user interface. The goal of services like QuickBooks, Sage Intacct and Xero is to eliminate the need for all the tables, spreadsheets and tracking sheets that were once necessary to manage a company’s important finance tasks.
The secret of creating future-proof financial tech stacks lies in moving away from legacy software towards easily automated solutions.
Automate your processes
Yet we’re now witnessing the rise of automated solutions that integrate with the software solutions mentioned above, leading to an unbundling of Excel functions:
The threat to Excel is not so much cheaper alternatives as it is unbundling the underlying enterprise tasks and moving them to dedicated tools. Don’t move hire tracking from Excel to GDocs: move it to a hiring tool. — Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
Technology is automating manual tasks and pushing Excel to the side. Financial controllers who don’t embrace these automated solutions are often the ones who get left behind.
Datamolino is an example of an automated accounting solution that has the potential to save financial controllers hours and hours. Finance controllers who use Datamolino can upload their bills, invoices and receipts (scanned paper documents, PDFs or photos), and the tool will extract all the information from the files and put it into a searchable, scannable format. No more data entry, and no more filing:
Another tool making the lives of financial controllers 10 times easier is our very own Teampay.
Teampay can save financial controllers and their teams hours each month by making procurement processes, payment reconciliation and spend management automated and easy. No more fumbling over Excel spreadsheets for expenses and purchase orders. Teampay issues virtual credit cards that sync directly with accounting services, making sure financial controllers know who spent how much and what they purchased.
Another great automation tool is Paystand, which automates the accounts receivable process to ensure that invoices are paid quickly and on time. Paystand enables businesses to automatically follow up with clients whose invoices are past due and offers clients the ability to pay online with a “one-click portal”. It syncs directly with full-service accounting software to ensure there’s no loss of data—always a danger if you are manually inputting payment information.
Create visual scorecards and track business KPIs
For financial controllers, and in order to meet financial goals for a business, easy-to-navigate dashboards are crucial for tracking KPIs, generating reports, and keeping tabs on the pulse of the company. In many organizations, the controller is expected to sound the alarm when the numbers are off or something looks amiss with the data. Finance controllers can use a visual dashboard that integrates with a wide range of services and data to identify when something needs to be flagged at the operational level, the management level or even at the stakeholder level.
Services like Klipfolio make it easy for organizations to connect with everything from Quickbooks and Salesforce to Google Analytics and Hubspot. This dashboard pulls in business KPIs from existing data to showcase things like departmental performance, account status, expenses, cash, burn, MRR, conversion rates and human resource related topics.
Here’s an example of an executive dashboard that could be created in Klipfolio:
Another example of a great service for seeing exactly how well your business is performing in terms of profitability, growth and cash flow is Fathom. It’s a similar service to Klipfolio in the visualization sense but it offers a more robust financial analysis offering. Here’s a quick snapshot of what their product offers.
There are, of course, alternatives based on your budget and tech stack, such as Domo or Grow. And top-tier accounting automation software like Teampay and Paystand will have their own dashboards as well, making it easier to track AP/AR data, respectively.
Communicate and collaborate across departments
A financial controller’s role and responsibilities are largely determined by the size of the company. And while it’s common practice for controllers to be responsible for managing data, they are sometimes also responsible for running an effective and efficient department and establishing the organization’s finance culture.
An organization’s finance culture is established from the top down, and one of the most important components is communication and collaboration. Email, shared folders and services like Slack have made it easy to embrace collaboration. Now, email plugins and Slack apps let organizations build on these tools to further enhance their ability to communicate.
Within the Slack ecosystem, there are plenty of finance-related apps that can streamline processes, approve expenses and much more. Teampay is one such Slack app that can be rolled out company-wide to manage purchasing approvals.
The wrap up: The future of a finance controller’s tool list
To summarize, upgrading your system to an automated accounting ERP and adding highly-functional accounting software can help you streamline your controller workflow. At the same time, working in the cloud with technology that is constantly evolving will enable you to prepare for the future—no matter how quickly the controller role changes.
Some software we discussed are:
- Your ERP: Sage Intacct, Xero, Quickbooks, Netsuite, etc.
- Accounting Automation: Teampay (AP), Paystand (AR), Paycor (Payroll) etc.
- Visual scorecards and business KPIs: Klipfolio, Domo, Grow, Fathom, etc.
- Communication: Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc.
Build your integrated tech stack today with the best finance controller tools
While many of these tools have been around for a number of years, the rise of new apps and automation services is changing the way financial controllers do their jobs. Identifying the right finance tools and embracing automation is an important step for any controller who wants to maximize their impact on their organization.
If you’re interested in learning more about the role of automation in accounting and how it has the potential to further shake up this industry, check out our piece: Why and How to Automate Your Accounting Process.
