Top 6 Tools and Technologies to Enhance your Tax Season

The accounting and tax industry has always offered crucial foundational support to every business. However, similar to every business function, it needs to evolve as per the current market needs.

This evolution can be accelerated by the advancements in technology. Platforms such as cloud technology have modified how we do accounting or calculate taxes.

Accountants and tax professionals can receive real-time data updates to make favorable decisions, automate calculations to reduce human errors and adhere to compliance requirements.

If, as an accounting professional, you wish to stay relevant in this environment and thrive in this competitive landscape, the adoption of technology is unavoidable. We have discussed 6 major technologies and tools to help you in the tax season.

1. Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has gained a lot of attention in the business world because of the flexibility and feasibility it offers. During COVID-19 lockdown, we have all learned the hard way that we need to operate remotely. Millions of organizations were not ready for this shift, but still, they had to move anyway.

Cloud technology helps you move your applications, data, and even desktops to the cloud. You can access these apps remotely, improve security, and enhance performance.

Here’s a list of benefits offered by the cloud:

• It is cost-effective as you don’t need to spend on in-house infrastructure. You can access the applications and data on internet-connected devices.
• You can allow employees to work from a remote location securely. Everything is on the cloud, and your employees need to clear multi-factor authentication to access files and data.
• Security of the cloud is advanced. With the resources cloud service providers have, they are always on top of security with antimalware, antivirus, intrusion detection, audit trails, etc.
• Everything on the cloud is backed up regularly to secure your data. At the time of a disaster, you can easily recover your applications, data, and desktops in very little time.
• The uptime offered by the cloud is 99.999%, which amounts to only a few hours in a year. Your business continuity is intact with the cloud.

2. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) gives your accounting process the power to take over labor-intensive, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks. You don’t need people for data entry. Just use AI and automation to capture data from various endpoints and apps automatically. Free the time of your tax professionals for more strategic roles.

Other than reducing data entry errors, artificial intelligence also has the power to offer you actionable insights. This technology can process and analyze your data to help you meet your business’s requirements. You can make decisions that are expected to go right and avoid turns that can go terribly wrong financially or in any other manner.

3. Social Media

Social media has been around for a long time now. From children to the elderly, everyone uses social media to interact and connect with family and friends, as well as brands and businesses. Millions and millions of organizations have started their functioning on social media.

It is high-time that accounting and tax businesses start utilizing the power of social media. Regularly post and reach out to your customers, conduct webinars to help them understand the latest tax reform changes, and just share interesting facts about taxes.

4. Blockchain

Similar to the cloud, blockchain is a secure way of keeping your data for the accounting industry. Due to the manner in which blockchain it developed, its records are immutable. No one can alter any transactions or remove any data. Once a transaction is stored in the blockchain, it stays there indefinitely.

Accounting and tax professionals can utilize this power of the blockchain to secure records and transactions. The blockchain also helps in using smart contracts for asset ownership, verifying credentials, and protecting the interests of users.

5. Big Data

In the accounting and tax industry, data is the most crucial aspect. In fact, data keeps flowing in from every direction every hour, every day. There’s just so much data, but without big data analytics, what will you do with it? If you are not using this data, you are putting it to waste.

Accounting and tax businesses can use natural language processing to find out patterns, monitor records, and figure out trends in data. This will help you generate valuable insights and improve your customers’ experience. These insights not only help you deliver customer satisfaction but also improve internal processes, reduce glitches, and avoid unfavorable business decisions.

6. Intelligence of Things

The Intelligence of Things is nothing but a smart combination of the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. While the internet of things connects devices, artificial intelligence offers these devices the ability to function without human support. The Intelligence of Things connects items and devices and allows them to communicate without human interpolation.

This means that the Intelligence of Things can be used to track transactions, records, and ledgers. As an accountant, you can identify discrepancies and resolve issues quickly. The continuous monitoring of systems through the Intelligence of Things makes your task stress-free, simpler, and streamlined.

Conclusion

Small and medium enterprises can especially benefit from these above technologies. Take the cloud, for example. Using cloud computing, you can mitigate your budget optimization challenges, advance security architecture, and cater to customers in an enhanced manner.

Hence, calibrate your business’s demands with the above technologies and tools. Once you know what you require, start implementing these technologies and tools for the tax season.