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How to Build an Accounting Bot in 5 Easy Steps

Home » Blog » How to Build an Accounting Bot in 5 Easy Steps

There is a good percentage of the population that do not understand Bots. They are confused by robots or poorly executed chat bots on a website. A bot is simply a piece of software that acts like a human by reading information through screen scraping and OCR (optical character recognition), uses Conversational AI when needed to understand voice calls and manage omnichannel communication, and then moves a mouse, plus copy and pastes information, enters data and uses multiple software tools to execute business processes just like a human would do.

At Valenta we love bots! Yes, we will admit, we do think they are cool. But more importantly we think they offer tremendous benefits for our SMB clients. Nearly every business sector we work with can benefit from bots. Accounting can especially benefit from them. Deploying an accounting bot and implementing some level of automated bookkeeping does not have to be a lengthy and complex process. In fact, we believe for a client perspective, bots can built and deployed in 2 weeks, and in 5 easy steps!

In the remainder of this blog we will discuss, why we love bots, why bots are awesome, and the 5 easy steps to launch an accounting bot.

Why we Love Bots

Besides thinking that bots are cool, we believe they are incredibly useful technology which can benefit all businesses when there is a compelling fit. We see transformative opportunities across many sectors, but none more so than accounting. We believe in the power of bots for accountants so much that we launched a microsite named Bots for Accountants which is chockful of useful information about accounting bots and automated bookkeeping. Three key messages on our microsite and 3 of the biggest reasons we love bots is that 1) they can be very quick to deploy, 2) bots can perform tasks 20 times faster than humans and 3) they cost a fraction of what a human would cost.

An accounting bot can also be incredibly flexible from a process and commercial perspective.

• Bots can work with all applications and do not require complex APIs to have different software working together, they use them like a human would (just at hyper speed).
• Bots can be deployed as a service in a SaaS model and billed monthly making it affordable for all businesses; no matter what the size of a business is.
• There is no infrastructure for client since it is a Saas model in the cloud. Valenta offers an end-to-end solution to streamline a business’s functions.

Why are Bots Awesome?

Automated bookkeeping is not about replacing human workers. It is about taking the most mundane, boring, and typically unpleasant work off the plates of humans and allowing them to move on to higher value and more interesting tasks. Work that is mundane and unpleasant is typically tasks that comes in higher volume, and which are rules based and repetitive. Using bots versus humans for this type of work also dramatically cuts down on errors. Let’s face it, humans get tired, bored, and distracted when doing these types of tasks.

The below table highlights just a sample of some of the tasks an accounting bot can automate.

Preparing management reports Invoice matching General subledger reconciliations
Preparing financial reports Reconciliations Bank-reconciliations
Accessing various portals Sales order entry Inter-company reconciliations
Purchase order entry Customer data set up Manual journal entries
Entry of delivery info Customer data management Reclassification of journal entries
Invoice receipt and classification Billing & invoicing Fixed asset accounting
Invoice data extraction Collection activities Inter-company settlements
Vendor statement reconciliation Financial close activities

What are the 5 Easy Steps?

The below diagram illustrates our go live process for an accounting bot. There are 7 total steps but only 5 steps that clients need to participate in. Best of all those 5 steps might only take a couple hours total!

The steps in the Valenta process include a “Process Walk Through” where we need client participation. This can be done in an hour. The next step is developing the “Online Project Plan”. This is a step we take on our own. Next is developing a PDD or “Project Design Document”. We request that clients review this, on a quick video call where we share a screen. Next up is the development of the “Solution Design Document”. We ask that our clients review this, but this can be done via email and take a few focused minutes. The next step in our process is the actual “Development “which we also do on our side. Then comes the “User Acceptance Test” and as the name implies the user / client is involved here. This step can take as little as an hour. Lastly, for the final 5th step is the “Go Live” stage.

Valentas 2 week deployment challenge

As you can see it really can be very straight forward to launch an accounting bot and enter the realm of automated bookkeeping. We can have you up in running in 2 weeks and in 5 easy steps on your side.

Want to Learn More?

You can see now why we think bots are awesome, and why we love them! At Valenta we believe 100% that automating a business should be as easy as possible for our clients. We also believe that all projects should demonstrate value and should transform a business. The RPA and AI projects we work on must have a demonstrated ROI and a positive impact on a business, otherwise, what is the point. We also believe that if discovery and implementation processes are too complex projects do not get done. This is why we strive to keep our processes logical and simple. There is beauty in simplicity. There is logic in process.

The adoption of bots is growing fast and will continue to accelerate. Large enterprises have already rapidly been adopting bots. Now it is time for SMBs to leverage them. We can provide considerable assistance when it comes to accounting bots and automated bookkeeping. We also help when it comes to other business software integrations and are available for consulting projects, and virtual staff. Some of the staff augmentation we provide includes outsourced accountants, bookkeepers, virtual assistants, digital marketing, and many other roles.

If you would like to discuss bots, AI, or RPA/IPA, we are here for that.
Please contact us to schedule a consultation now.
Check  our RPA calculator for automation feasibility