How Accounting Firms Can Leverage SharePoint and Copilot

Accounting requires efficiency, accuracy, and collaboration. As organizations strive to streamline their financial processes and ensure compliance with evolving regulations, they turn to innovative tools to enhance productivity and effectiveness.  

Among its other uses, Microsoft SharePoint provides a secure location for employees to store, organize, share, and access information across an organization. 

Microsoft Copilot is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool that is primarily meant to support Microsoft 365 users with automation features. It is designed to serve as an assistant, delivering improved work-related productivity and it can automate repetitive tasks. 

This article explores how accountants can leverage SharePoint and Copilot to optimize their workflows, improve collaboration, and elevate their performance. 

SharePoint: Transforming Financial Document Management 

Document Organization and Accessibility 

One of the main challenges accountants is managing a volume of financial documents.  

With SharePoint, accounting teams can create dedicated document libraries for several types of financial documents, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, budgeting, and financial reporting. Each library can be customized with metadata fields to facilitate efficient categorization and searchability, enabling users to quickly locate the information they need. 

Collaboration and Approval Workflows 

Collaboration is essential in accounting, particularly when it comes to reviewing and approving financial transactions and reports. SharePoint’s collaboration features, such as co-authoring, version control, and workflows automation, facilitate seamless collaboration among team members, auditors, and stakeholders. 

Accountants can leverage SharePoint’s workflow capabilities to automate approval processes for financial documents. For example, when an invoice is uploaded to SharePoint, a predefined approval workflow can route the document to the appropriate person for review and approval. This streamlines the approval process, reduces manual intervention, and ensures compliance with organizational policies and regulations.  

Integration with Financial Systems 

Many accounting firms rely on specialized financial systems, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software, to manage financial transactions and generate reports. SharePoint seamlessly integrates with these systems, enabling accounting firms to access financial data and reports directly from SharePoint portals and dashboards. 

Integration with financial systems allows accountants to create interactive dashboards and reports within SharePoint, providing stakeholders with real-time insights into financial performance, cash flow, and budgetary trends. By consolidating financial data and reports in SharePoint, organizations can enhance transparency, accountability, and decision-making across the enterprise. 

Copilot: Accelerating Code Development for Financial Applications 

Customization and Automation 

In addition to managing financial documents, accounting firms often develop custom applications and scripts to automate routine tasks, perform data analysis, and generate financial reports. Copilot, an artificial intelligence (AI) powered tool, accelerates code development by providing intelligent code suggestions and completions based on context and programming language. 

Accounts can use Copilot to develop custom financial applications, such as budgeting tools and forecasting models. By analyzing existing code repositories and best practices, Copilot generates code pieces that align with industry standards and coding conventions, which reduces development time and es errors. 

Data Analysis and Reporting 

Data analysis is a core competency of accounting professionals, who often rely on programming languages such as Python and SQL to extract, transform, and analyze financial data. Copilot augments the data analysis process by offering code suggestions for querying databases, performing calculations, and visualizing results. 

Accountants can use Copilot to write complex SQL queries to retrieve financial data from databases, automate data transformation tasks using Python Scripts, and create interactive visualizations using libraries such as Matplotlib and Plotly. By leveraging copilot’s code generation capabilities, accountants can expedite the data analysis process and focus on deriving actionable insights from financial data. 

How Leveraging SharePoint and Copilot Can Benefit Your Business:  

1. Enhanced collaboration: accountants collaborate more effectively, thanks to SharePoint’s co-authoring and approval workflow features, leading to greater accuracy and accountability in financial reporting. 

1. Accelerated Development: Custom financial applications are developed faster, thanks to Copilot’s intelligent code suggestions and completions, enabling accountants to focus on value-added activities.  

1. Data-driven Insights: With real-time access to financial data and reports, stakeholders make informed decisions, driving business growth and profitability.  

SharePoint and Copilot offer powerful capabilities for accounting firms to optimize financial document management, streamline development processes, and derive actionable insights from financial data. By leveraging these tools effectively, accounting professionals can enhance efficiency, collaboration, and decision-making, thereby driving organizational success in today’s competitive business landscape. 

At ARI, we leverage both SharePoint and Copilot to streamline our clients’ processes and maintain a secure location through which to share financial documents.  

To learn more about how we can help take the financial burden off your shoulders, contact us today. 

In the meantime, learn the 10 benefits of outsourcing your accounting and bookkeeping needs.  

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