Trends in Accounting & Finance: How Salesforce Apps Add Efficiency

Streamline processes, simplify reporting, and get actionable data.

The seeds of growth have been planted. Accounting professionals are discovering that when they leverage technology, it saves time and reduces costs, so they can focus more on customer service. In fact, B2B Review reports in their Small Business Accounting Statistics that 94% of large accounting firms and 90% of small firms are adopting technology to boost efficiency during tax season in an effort to improve their processes.

B2B Review is projecting the accounting market will grow to $735 billion by 2025. And utilizing technology can help fuel that growth. “Accounting firms that utilize cloud accounting solutions can now expand their reach, which attracts talent and clients from a wider geographic area,” explains their report.

This forecast for growth for accounting firms is great news. But there’s a backstory that comes with growth and managing increasing amounts of information. “Consulting and accounting firms need the ability to eliminate data silos, connect data across their organization, and ensure that everything they know about each client, service, and offering is in one central location,”  explains a Salesforce^® article.

AI & Data Quality Are Impacting Finance Departments and Accounting Firms 

Is the answer AI? When accounting firms incorporate AI into their accounting software, it automates data categorization and entry. This is great if the data is clean. The truth is that many organizations are facing significant challenges with the quality of their data. 

Gartner’s "Top 5 Priorities for CFOs in 2025" report found: “35% of CFOs say data quality is a key inhibitor for low AI adoption in finance. Accurate data, metrics, and analytics are central to finance’s ability to provide agile planning, budgeting, and forecasting, as well as its ability to pilot AI solutions." 

Salesforce gives accounting firms a single source of truth for managing their data and customer interactions. But the key to making the most of Salesforce is having quality data that’s clean and connected.

See how others are using our apps to streamline accounting processes, simplify reporting, and provide actionable data. Check out these customer stories:

Actionable Data for Accounts Receivable 

As an independent consultant for Accounting Seed, Kathryn Cantwell’s company CFO Cloud Consulting leverages the Salesforce platform to simplify accounting processes. “When a business needs to transition from a legacy accounting system to a cloud-based one, we transform their business challenge into a cost-saving and revenue generating opportunity,” said Kathryn.

CFO Cloud Consulting uses Rollup Helper to get real-time data that shows how much clients are owed on an account. They also use it to help clients rollup their accounts receivable delinquencies into 30-day, 60-day, and 90- day buckets for invoices, as well as for flagging accounts that have more than three outstanding invoices. (Read the full story CFO Cloud Consulting Manages Billing Data for Clients With Rollup Helper.)

Running Reports for Multiple Departments

Glen Huckins, Aftermarket/CRM Manager at Thompson Pump, chose Rollup Helper because they needed to do text rollups. Although you can do count, sum, min, and max rollups and create filters to limit which rollups fire with a native rollup in Salesforce, you can't include cross-object formula fields in rollup summary filters. With Rollup Helper, you can create more than 25 types of rollups, including Advanced Currency Management, unique count, checkbox, and text. 

“The ability to schedule rollups has enabled us to run our morning GEMBA reports without manually running specific rollups that need to run without a field change triggering them,” said Glen. (Full story: Thompson Pump Gets Around Rollup Limitations & Simplifies Reporting with Rollup Helper).

Simplifying Reporting

When Clear Capital needed to display multiple revenue and volume summaries for use in multiple business units, they chose Rollup Helper and Lookup Helper to achieve their goals. The result is that Clear Capital is providing data for their teams that would otherwise be done manually. (Read the full story: Clear Capital Simplifies Reporting With Lookup Helper & Rollup Helper.)

Ready to transform your accounting and reporting processes? Check out these use cases:

Data Cleanup

Ensuring Billing Info Is Included for Accounts in Salesforce

Finding and Fixing Duplicate Contacts in Salesforce

Organizing Data & Reporting

Non-Profit Donations by Company

Monthly or YOY Reporting in Salesforce with Rollup Helper & Lookup Helper

Total Sales (from Invoices or Opportunities)

Easily Access Aggregated Rollups/Metrics Without Complex Reporting

Create Parent Record on Field Match

Creating Grandchild Rollups

Creating Account Hierarchy Rollups without Coding

Roll-up Solution When a Roll-up Summary Field Can't be Used

Billing, Pricing & Revenue Cloud 

Milestone Billing Automation with Revenue Cloud, Salesforce CPQ

Setting up Revenue Cloud (Salesforce CPQ, Billing)

Tracking Billable and Nonbillable Time for Customer Projects

Ensuring Accurate Pricing and Margin Levels With Rollup Helper

Rollup Helper for FinancialForce

Relate Salesforce Records (like Accounts or Contacts) to States

Ready to add more efficiency without writing code? We can help you improve data quality in your Salesforce org. Schedule a demo and learn more, here.