The last decade has seen a revolution in accounting technology. The rise of cloud accounting software has made it simpler to maintain accounting records.

Bank feeds are a major driver, pulling in data and making transactions easy to categorise. Unfortunately, bank feeds are not perfect. Frequently, they contain errors and can be challenging to set up and reauthenticate.

There is a solution. The issues can be overcome by checking bank balances and transactions at source. This can be achieved manually, but significant time and hassle can be saved by using smart technology to provide an automated solution.

Broken feeds impacting client delivery

William Stanley & Co often experience issues getting bank feeds set up and live when onboarding new clients. Fixing them can take days and impacts client services by not generating up-to-date cash balances - limiting possible insights.

The firm recently took on a new client that had broken bank feeds, and to solve the issue, they turned to Armalytix:

“To resolve the issue, we jumped on a call with Armalytix. This allowed us to receive up-to-date bank transactions from the client in just a few minutes. After this, we were able to get the information directly uploaded onto Xero and support the client with analytics insights from Power BI.” - James Couch, Director at William Stanley & Co.

Automation of data collection is one of the next frontiers for accountants.

Confirming bank balances for VAT returns

My Cloud 9 is a Xero-based practice. The firm experiences frustrations with bank feeds being difficult to set-up and sometimes inaccurate. They also had a bank feed issue, where every transaction was duplicated over a one-week period.

Co-founder Alexandra Macleod overcame these issues by using Armalytix to confirm bank balances for VAT quarters, and where there were no bank feeds, using Armalytix to request all transactions:

“We are massive fans of Armalytix. We use it when we don’t have data at all and as a sense check to confirm balances for VAT returns and monthly bookkeeping.”

Unfortunately, bank feeds are not perfect.

Reconciling bank balances for year-end accounts

Michael Beaver & Co, a firm focusing on professional services and trade businesses, experience missing and duplicate transactions from bank feeds.

As part of the checks completed at year-end, the firm uses Armalytix to confirm and reconcile bank balances:

“We use Armalytix downloads to reconcile at year-end. Around 50% of the time, there are issues with bank feeds that need to be reconciled. Armalytix gets the transactions in faster and gets the information correct in the first place.”

“This allowed us to receive up-to-date bank transactions from the client in just a few minutes”

Automation of data collection is one of the next frontiers for accountants. Using tools like Armalytix to fix broken bank feeds and confirm bank balances gives accountants and clients surety about accuracy and allows compliance filings to be completed speedily and on time.