The multi-billion dollar sports industry has created an increased demand for accountants to organize financial records of major sporting franchises. Sports accountants play a vital role in these athletic organizations as they must ensure the team has adequate funds needed to draw in and retain the league’s best players and coaches for winning success. Without efficient financial close processes, accountants will not be able to tell executives in advance of year-end whether they had a successful overall year or whether they suffered significant losses.

Due to the seasonal nature of sports, accountants need to work a lot faster and be more responsive than the average accountant. Take the upcoming Super Bowl LIV for example. This multi-billion dollar affair brings in big bucks for the ultimate champions so the team’s accountants will have their hands full for a few months. Some of the biggest challenges they face include deferred revenues, cash flow management, and forecasting. However, with automation, sports accountants’ daily tasks can be radically transformed to be faster, more efficient and streamlined.

Reduced data entry

About 75% of an accountant’s job revolves around the redundant processing of spreadsheet-based data. Unfortunately, Excel spreadsheets were not created to do the level of computing accountants need. In fact, it’s lack of detailed computation is the reason that Excel is so tedious and time consuming for accountants and why they spend hours upon hours in data entry and computations. With accounting automation software, sports accountants can spend less time number crunching deferred revenues and more time with data analytics and analysis. With a holistic view of the end-of-month or end-of-season processes, sports accountants can advise teams on budget forecasting to set these athletic organizations up for longer-term financial success.

Increased compliance

Governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) continue to be pillars of the accounting profession. And, accountants have the ability to support overarching GRC processes within the athletic organization. With automation, teams benefit from improved transparency as data collection is more accurate, ensuring cash flow management is streamlined. What’s more, the process to produce and analyze data also allows accountants to quickly identify and manage risk and automate internal controls. When it’s time for annual audits, sports accountants can rest assured that auditors don’t have to dig through documentation in file cabinets as everything has been digitized. This also means that the time for auditing is shorter, saving the sports team valuable resources and costs.

Work/life balance

Sports accountants typically work long hours beyond the standard 40-hour workweek in order to meet financial closing deadlines. By standardizing internal accounting processes, sports accountants can match transactions, automate balance sheet reconciliation, and easily identify any bottlenecks in the process. This creates greater efficiency and precision while also providing accountants with greater control over financial close processes. With complete visibility of the accounting process thanks to automation, close processes can be completed in a matter of days compared to weeks with manual processes. This means that accountants can curb the late hours and weekends working to achieve more in significantly less time.

Sports accounting provides an exciting opportunity for accountants to work in an energetic and fast-paced environment. With automation tools, accountants’ roles are modernized and they can spend more time strategically thinking about the numbers and what they mean for the athletic organization. Automation software can ensure teams continue to deliver just as much on their financial process as they deliver on the field.

The Dallas Cowboys has signed Adra by Trintech to help its sports accountants automate and simplify financial processes. On average, Adra can reduce the close time for customers by 50% while creating more standardized processes and improving accuracy. You can read more here.

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