Gone are those days when businesses used to practice accounting on pen and paper as we have moved to a completely digital era, where paper and pen have no use, especially in the major business processes. Well, one such part of the business that should always be practiced digitally is accounting.
Accounting is the soul of any business although it doesn’t look that exciting but with proper accounting, a business can give detailed information to investors and make them succumb to investment, keep tabs on the financial health of the business and take major decisions based on it and much more.
But when businesses are involved in traditional accounting, then the chances of error increase and because of this, you might have to deal with legal punishment along with financial loss. This is why you should start planning how to move from your traditional accounting practice to the new accounting system.
Well, the transition, in this case, will not be smooth if you will not take proper measures and this is what we are going to discuss in this blog post in a detailed manner.
Give time to analyze the options
One of the first things that you should do is analyze all the options rather than just choosing what lies in front of you. There are many portfolio accounting solutions out there but this doesn’t mean that all of them are perfect for your business.
Each accounting solution has been designed to serve the needs of different types and sizes of business and you have to keep this important point in mind. So, first of all, you should make a list of some of the best accounting software solutions, and then you should start filtering them on the basis of your specific needs.
There are various parameters that you can use to filter down the available options like ease of use, cloud compatibility, customer support, seamless UI, safety features, and much more.
Address the issue of data migration
Accounting involves a lot of data and therefore, you have to be specific about the process you are choosing for transferring the data otherwise you might have to deal with delays in the process, or in the worst-case scenario, you might even have to face data loss.
The data migration process is a challenging task and this is why almost 38% of the data migration projects fail. So, while trying to move to a system, let the platform provider know your specific concerns with data migration as this promotes seamless data migration.
Some of the important questions that you can ask before data migration to a new portfolio accounting system are;
- Will my current data be compatible with the new system?
- What is the number of custodial feeds the new system will have?
- How much time it would take for complete data migration?
- What will be the role of the provider in the data migration process?
Run old and new systems in parallel
Along with having enough time to analyze the available options, you should have enough time to transition from the old system to the new one. After making the final decision to switch, you should always have a period where you can easily see both the old and the new systems running simultaneously.
This is where you can ensure that everything is working properly. Some of the points that you must check are;
- Custodial data fields are working properly
- No delay or any other issue in report generation
- All the points and data systems are moving to the new one without any hassle
In many cases, people don’t have enough time and resources to run both the system parallelly and check whether things are working as per their expectations or not but you can at least try to run them parallelly as it will help in avoiding any issue with the new system in the future.
Proper preparation before moving to the new system
You can’t deny the pain involved in moving from an old system to a new system but when you compare this pain with the advantages of the new system then the advantages will surely outcast the hassle involved in the transition.
One of the best ways to minimize the hassle involved in the transition is to prepare well and be aware of all the aspects of transition. This way, you can make sure that you are moving according to your plan, and thus the chances of anything going haywire can be minimized.
Moving to a new portfolio accounting system offers a lot of advantages but most people are afraid of the hassle involved in the transition. Well, there are many ways you can get rid of this hassle and harness the benefits of the new system as soon as possible.