2023 is in full swing and, as with every year, the goal for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) is to improve over the year prior and achieve new benchmarks, likely regarding conversion rates, customer experience and, of course, the company’s bottom line. Over the previous three years, SMBs have worked to implement innovative software applications, like customer relationship management (CRM), marketing automation and accounting software, to improve operations and combat new and evolving challenges – like the adoption of work-from-home business models, social distancing guidelines, various shutdowns and ongoing inflation.
With a wealth of new technologies emerging over the past two years to address these evolving challenges, SMB owners must look to integrate and optimize their tech stacks to get the most out of their investments and stand out among the competition. While owners will focus on integrating CRM with marketing automation tools to accelerate sales and enhance customer engagement, many SMBs overlook the importance and benefits of integrating their CRM with popular accounting software, like Intuit Quickbooks. With 29% of businesses failing because they run out of money due to poor cash flow, according to CBInsights, and 60% of small business owners acknowledging they lack understanding when it comes to accounting, simplifying accounting processes to ensure your company’s bookkeeping is accurate is pivotal for SMB owners navigating operations with tight budgets.
Let’s look at three benefits of CRM and accounting software integration that will help keep your SMB organized and optimized in 2023.
Simplifying accounting processes
All too often, SMBs manage their accounting processes separately from sales. Thus, account transactions and updates must be manually updated. Not only do these processes waste time, forcing employees to jump back and forth between applications, but they leave businesses vulnerable to errors and inaccuracies.
By integrating accounting software with your CRM, you can avoid errors and mitigate inconsistencies by doing away with most manual processes. By integrating your accounting application with a powerful CRM tool, SMBs can leverage automation to record all purchases, invoices and accounting updates in real-time. Users can also create and edit customer data, find and edit transactions, duplicate past transactions, and quickly convert opportunities into transactions from a centralized platform. By eliminating the need to toggle between programs, SMBs reduce mistakes, like duplicating data, to further save time and ensure accuracy.
Gaining a more complete picture of your customer relationships
By integrating your CRM and accounting software, your team can access the complete lifetime value of a customer with the click of a mouse. This includes a year-by-year view that provides visibility into products purchased over time, purchasing patterns and total sales. And, with the right CRM, teams can create groups based on what products customers purchased, total sales, the dates of purchases or overdue balances—with alerts to identify at-risk “past due” accounts.
Streamlining information retrieval
During tax season, disorganized accounting information can lead to a lot of wasted time and resources for SMBs. With CRM and accounting software integration, SMBs can easily categorize, search and find customer transactions by products purchased, dates and overdue balances. The perfect CRM will also enable accounting teams to run reports based on:
Top customers by date range
Top customers with a past-due balance
Top customers with a high balance
Top-grossing products
Sales reports by rep
Top sold products
AR reports
Regardless of the time of year, the ability to quickly find, reference and share transaction and contact history will improve customer support, ensure your books are up-to-date and accurate, help business streamline and mitigate auditing processes and help SMB owners rest easier at night.
Over the last three years, SMBs have displayed the resiliency and agility necessary to navigate through unprecedented economic and social challenges through the adoption of new technologies and ways of working. As we usher in the new year, SMB owners must continue to push the boundaries of innovation in order to streamline operations. Through the integration of powerful CRM software and accounting applications, SMBs can introduce the organization and understanding needed to optimize operations and provide a better experience for their customers.
