Automating the Finance Department
80% of senior finance leaders agree that finance must significantly accelerate its application of advanced digital technologies (RPA and AI) to effectively serve the business in 2025 (Gartner). The finance department has an abundance of processes which are ripe for automation, these include, but are not limited to: payroll processing; direct debit mandates; accounts receivable; accounts payable; general accounting; tax; treasury and financial planning.
Here we’ll discuss in more detail how payroll processing and direct debit mandates can be automated and streamlined, to allow your finance staff to focus on more high value tasks.
Automation of Payroll processing
Ensuring the accurate and timely payment of staff is a necessary part of running any business. Despite being imperative to every business, the process can often take up a lot of time and resources from the finance department — hence the need to automate.
The following case study outlines the solution delivered for a Kainos customer:
The Challenge
The organisation provided external payroll processing for their customers, utilising a manual and error prone process to deliver this service. The process included manual checking of folders, validation and workflow to payroll teams. This was an insecure process which was prone to security issues, where information was shared with unauthorised people.
Our Solution
We developed an automation solution, by utilising Microsoft’s Power Platform, Azure Functions and SharePoint.
The solution consisted of:
Automated extraction of files from folders, where they were decrypted using secure keys stored in Key vault. Decompression and automatic validation of details within the documents. Through Power Automate, documents were routed to the correct secure SharePoint portal which could not be accessed by unapproved users.
Outcomes / Benefits
Automating the process enabled the customer to increase payroll processing productivity and to secure the handling of sensitive payroll data. Additionally, key aspects of the solution such as the automated extraction of files and automatic validation of details cut the need for staff to manually perform these tasks, removing the scope for human error and freeing up the finance team to focus on higher value tasks.
Direct Debit Mandate Automation
Use of a standard direct debit service without integration with your company’s financial systems, means bank reconciliations have to be done manually. This process involves matching every payment and bank statement line, which can be a very time-consuming task. Automating this task could save the finance team hours of manual processing.
The following case study outlines Kainos’ automated solution:
Challenge
A national information assurance agency had a backlog of over 3000 direct debit mandates (both typed and handwritten) which required processing to enable payments to be collected.
Our Solution
Kainos developed and deployed an automated solution again utilising Microsoft Power Automate to:
Check an email mailbox for direct debit mandates
Apply AI to extract the details including account number and sort code
Check the account validity with external systems
Load the details into the finance system
Outcomes / Benefits
Automating the direct debit mandate allowed for much faster processing, taking minutes rather than days. Automating also removed the risk of error in manual processing and cleared the backlog of mandates which inevitably saved the finance team 100s of working hours. Again, by automating this process accuracy and timeliness were improved, while allowing staff time to focus on higher value tasks.
How to get started?
At Kainos we can rapidly guide you towards intelligent operations delivering the savings, efficiencies and service improvements that your HR department needs.