accounting_dark_ages_largeFollowing on from Linda’s recent post, “Are you too busy to meet your Account Manager?”,  I ask the question, where exactly did the time go?

It’s difficult to pinpoint the precise moment when our schedules got so full, particularly for finance departments. Other departments can often draw direct correlations to their busy diaries with the advent of new technologies and the ever increasing, competitive market place. With these clear and obvious pressures, it often sparks change in processes and technology required to cope with their new environments. But finance teams are increasingly short of time too, so why aren’t they evolving and coping like the rest?

There is a saying that, “If you place a frog in boiling water, it will jump right back out. But if you put the frog in cold water and heat it gradually, it will sit there and slowly roast alive”.

Over the years, finance departments have not been exposed to the same immediate pressures as other departments, instead they have been drip fed their increasing workload, such as having requirements to process more orders and invoices, prepare larger payment runs and produce more detailed management reports. These have simply been added to their existing workloads with no thought to the knock on effects as it is so often seen as just one more task. Given that it is just one more task it hasn’t created a large enough overwhelming blow needed to instigate change.

So how do you know if you are stuck in Finance’s bubbling cauldron?

Well for starters ask yourself:

  • How is your time monopolised? Is it data entry? Purchase orders? Payment runs? Producing management reports? Bank Reconciliations for month/quarterly/year end?
  • Do you have a clear staff expenses policy? Processing of employee expenses is one of the most time-consuming tasks and is also prone to errors.
  • Are there any monotonous or labour intensive processes that you dread & how often do they keep you in the office after hours?
  • Do these tasks impact on being able to work proactively; are you continuously firefighting tasks to keep your workload under control?


If you believe any of the above applies to you, chances are you are using outdated accounting practices whilst trying to cope with the modern day workload. Modern day solutions and practices mean you can be freed from manual, labour-intensive processes allowing you to spend less time on key strokes and work more productively.

At Eclipse, we provide a free of charge “Strategic Systems Review” as part of our Support Service. The main objective of the Strategic System Review is to provide our clients with a clear understanding of their business solutions, their capabilities, and how they can be used to streamline processes. This is then laid out in full a report, documenting how effectively existing systems are utilised and where appropriate we provide suggestions on how to streamline those time consuming, manual business processes.

It is the 21st century and our workloads reflect that, there is no need to suffer with outdated 20th century accounting practices.

To enquire about a Strategic Systems Review, or to simply discuss some of the accounting issues you are experiencing, feel free to get in touch:

Linda Scott - +44 203 866 8813 | lscott@eclgrp.com

James Waylett - +44 203 866 8811 | jawaylett@eclgrp.com

  • Email