For decades, Salesforce has been a leading customer relationship management (CRM) tool. It helps companies track every step of their sales process, identifies customer insights and trends, and helps decision makers use data when creating sales strategies. The platform helps both small and large businesses close deals, improve productivity and create detailed analytical reports – it's a key business tool.
As powerful as Salesforce can be when it comes to customer relationship management, no one tool can offer all solutions for businesses. When business leaders consider Salesforce accounting software, they will quickly notice that the platform is not as strong in that area as it is for their sales teams.
So how can it be carried out successfully? accounting in Salesforce despite not being specifically designed for those types of tasks? Integrations. By integrating the right third-party accounting solutions with Salesforce, businesses of all sizes can experience the true power of all the tools they use in their organization.
Accounting in Salesforce
Accounting in Salesforce is very limited, but the platform has some out-of-the-box features that accounting and finance teams can use. Because of the link to sales, things like invoices, sales orders, and purchase requests can be managed directly in Salesforce, but beyond that, accounting in Salesforce is quite limited. Some key elements missing from an accounting perspective are:
- AP functionality: Although Salesforce provides some billing capabilities, accounts payable teams cannot process payments, track accounts payable aging and other key reports, or analyze customer payment trends over time.
- Audit and compliance functions: In the world of accounting, ensuring GAAP compliance and detailed audit functions are non-negotiable. As a CRM tool primarily, Salesforce does not provide that support.
- Detailed expense tracking: Managing (and often reducing) costs is the responsibility of every accounting professional in the world. With Salesforce, tracking expenses at the transaction level is impossible.
- Budget capabilities: Salesforce does not provide robust budgeting capabilities, such as budgeting, variance analysis, and forecasting, which are crucial to maintaining the financial health of businesses overall.
There are some add-on modules, such as Billing and Revenue Cloud, that can be used to track incoming funds, but any accountant knows that those features only support a small fraction of what accounting teams work on day in and day out. Fortunately, due to the platform's prominence around the world, many SaaS accounting solutions integrate seamlessly with Salesforce, creating a complete technology environment that can track sales, manage expenses, pay invoices, and more, all in the same place. same place.
Integration of accounting software with Salesforce
By integrating with Salesforce, accounting software solutions like QuickBooks and FreshBooks establish a two-way integration. This type of integration means that the tools can communicate with each other. For example, when changes are made to a client's account within Salesforce, those changes will also be reflected in the accounting software.
This two-way integration is crucial because it means you can always trust that all your business tools will be up to date and aligned with each other.
Instead of having to make updates to both systems, the systems work together in the background to link mapping routes, numerical data, and more.
In isolation, accounting in Salesforce is limited to invoicing, payment tracking, and revenue recognition, but by integrating Salesforce with quality third-party applications, organizations can solve accounts payable, accounts receivable, financial reportsand even one-time data analysis.
Top Accounting Software Integrations for Salesforce
There is a lot of accounting software that integrates with Salesforce, but some integrations are more powerful than others. If you're ready to invest in accounting software integration with Salesforce, we recommend learning more about FreshBooks Salesforce Integration and Salesforce QuickBooks Integration.
Salesforce FreshBooks Integration
As accounting software built specifically for freelancers and self-employed business owners, FreshBooks offers users a simple and seamless experience while making bookkeeping a breeze. With comprehensive invoicing capabilities, FreshBooks pairs incredibly well with Salesforce, making it easy to create and manage invoices, track expenses, and track incoming and outgoing payments.
With the FreshBooks REST API, the FreshBooks/Salesforce integration enables automatic use of Salesforce data for accounting purposes.
For example, when you mark an opportunity as “Closed Won” in Salesforce, the customer's profile is automatically created in FreshBooks, an invoice is generated based on the profile, and that invoice is sent directly to the customer.
This is just one example of how the Salesforce/FreshBooks integration makes collaboration between sales and finance processes easier than ever.
Salesforce QuickBooks Integration
Both sales and accounting departments will benefit from Salesforce/QuickBooks. If a sales representative needs to see a customer's information payment history or outstanding bills, they can find all that information within Salesforce even if it was pulled from QuickBooks. On the other hand, if an accountant needs to look up sales orders or customer contracts (which are typically recorded in Salesforce), they can find that information directly in QuickBooks.
The unified data flow between the two systems makes it possible for your teams to gain a more holistic view of customer experience and business impact without having to learn a system they are not familiar with.
This helps manage cash flow, create better reporting, and solidify customer relationships. By spending less time searching for data across multiple systems, both your sales team and your accounting team can spend more time adding value to the organization in other ways.
In addition to traditional accounting software that integrates with Salesforce, you can look for integrations to complement Salesforce and cover some of its limitations.
One of those integrations is nanonetworks.
Salesforce Nanogrid Integration
When combined, Nanonetworks and Salesforce will significantly improve any organization's accounts payable functionality by automating data-intensive processes and streamlining record-keeping. Nanonets uses revolutionary OCR (Optical character recognition) technology to accurately extract and record data from key documents such as invoices, receipts and even bank statements. Nanonets then takes the data that Salesforce captures and updates, significantly reducing the time required for data entry and reducing the number of data-related errors along the way.
This integration not only automates AP tasks but also ensures consistency within your organization's technology stack. With Nanonets in the picture, your AP function will work in a more optimized way. Real-time data processing and validation, improved operational efficiency, and fewer data errors to correct will change the way your organization does business. Even more, Nanonets works well with other business tools, saving time and improving data insights across business functions.
Choose the right integration
When it comes to Salesforce accounting, you'll need a complementary tool that integrates well with Salesforce to truly manage all your accounting priorities. We've listed three options above, but in reality, there are several tools that can solve your accounting needs. When selecting the right integration for your business, be sure to consider the following:
- Budget
- Organization size
- Future growth goals
- Accounting priorities
- Most important features
- Customer service structure
- Reviews from current customers
Some of these considerations are internal conversations with your sales and accounting leaders, but some will require you to also seek outside perspectives. Are there organizations in your industry that have experience using the Salesforce/QuickBooks integration or prefer the Nanonets functionality? Asking can help you gain real user insights, which is incredibly valuable when deciding which integration will best support Salesforce accounting for your business.
Better together
Is Salesforce a standalone SaaS solution that can be used for accounting purposes? Not precisely. Does Salesforce offer much value to accounting teams? When integrated with the right accounting software, absolutely. We do business in a world where companies are only as good as the people they have and the tools they use; Now is the time to invest in the right Salesforce accounting software integrations to help your organization stand out.
Whether you're prioritizing AP Automation with Nanonets or relying on FreshBooks' self-employment features, combining your accounting software with Salesforce really is a no-brainer, and in business, not many things are a no-brainer.
