Recent research indicates that 41% of Americans today say none of their purchases in a typical week are paid for using cash—a double digit increase within the last decade. With the transition to primarily online sales, whether thorough e-commerce or credit and debit cards, cash transactions are becoming a thing of the past.

This means that simple one-to-one reconciliations are also trending down. Instead, retailers are processing more third-party transactions with:

• Credit card companies
• Online payment applications, such as PayPal or Square
• Delivery service providers like Favor, UberEats, and Instacart

With the sheer amount of digital transactions, retailers must balance the following within their three-way matching reconciliation process:

• Different payment types
• Processing fees
• Bank data

Being unable to reconcile transactions in an accurate and timely manner can cause you to have an inaccurate picture of how much cash your business has on-hand.

Similarly, keeping track of the inventory and reconciling the point-of-sale transactions has also been a difficult challenge to manual month-end close processes as the risk of errors and mistakes increases with each transaction. These inaccuracies can lead to poor business decisions that could land your retail business in hot water.

How Retailers Can Beat the Challenges of the Financial Close Process

Finding an accounting solution that improves your month-end process and cash reconciliations while allowing you to meet the challenges of a hybrid retail industry might seem difficult at first. However, if you focus on these four core concepts, you’ll find that modernizing your accounting solution is actually quite easy:

• Streamline and centralize your internal financial processes.

  • By creating a dependency-based checklist template, you empower your team to take ownership of their tasks and reduce the risks of inaccurate data in your month-end close.

• Automate repetitive, low-risk tasks.

  • Don’t waste valuable time inputting redundant data month after month. With automation that tracks and stores your consistent data in the cloud, you’ll minimize the chance of human error in simple accounting processes.

• Import new financial records to simplify matching.

  • Get accurate and reliable data by configuring your system to import and match audit-ready financial records. You’ll be able to adjust for three-way matching and external fees so you can easily track down the reconciliation discrepancies that need your attention.

• Configure custom accounting reports that give you transparency into your finances.

  • With endless reporting capabilities that give you the data you need, you can track specific data points over multiple periods, empowering your team to explore and correct inaccurate entries.

Evolve With a Modern Retail Accounting Solution

With the rise of online sales, non-cash transactions, and the impending holiday shopping season, the time to rev up your accounting solution is now. Take the same structure you’re used to and evolve your processes into a robust, adaptable, and modern accounting solution that increases your efficiency and productivity. 

Featuring an intuitive interface that empowers you to close more efficiently, accurately, and quicker, Trintech’s solutions enable you to:

• Manage your month-end processes with a single, one-stop solution.
• Take the repetition out of your balance sheet reconciliation.
• Automate your transaction management.
• Understand every detail of your financial close.

Not only does Trintech modernize your financial close solution, but we also help you reconcile three-way matching from:

• Credit card processors
• Bank data
• Merchant data, which would include Shopify or Paypal

Plus, the scalability of Trintech’s solutions and having a standardized process allows you to run your business more efficiently during the already busy holiday season.

Regardless of whether you run your retail business traditionally or virtually, when you’re ready to see how Trintech can give you a modern accounting solution to a modern accounting problem, reach out to one of our experts to schedule a demo.