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Managing your business finances involves much more than keeping the books up to date.
There are suppliers to pay, payroll to approve, tax deadlines to meet, receipts to find and financial reports to understand - often while you're trying to run the rest of the business.
Addition Finance brings these tasks together in one platform, supported by your own dedicated finance team.
Instead of wondering what needs your attention or spending time going back and forth over email, you can log in, see what needs doing and take action.
The platform also uses AI and automation to reduce repetitive bookkeeping work, while keeping you in control of important financial decisions.
In this article, we'll take you inside the Addition platform and look at its key features, how they work and how they make managing your business finances simpler.
Your Overview: Know Exactly What Needs Your Attention
The Overview is the first thing you see when you log in to Addition.
Rather than expecting you to check every area of your finances yourself, Addition brings the things that need your attention into a simple task list.
You might be asked to:
- Review a supplier payment run
- Approve your VAT return
- Review payroll
- Approve a bill or expense
- Upload a missing receipt
- Answer a question from your finance team
You can work through these tasks and immediately see when you're caught up.
The Overview also shows upcoming deadlines and the finance team looking after your account. If you need to discuss something, you can book a call with your finance manager directly from the platform.
Supplier Payments: Approve Once, Rather Than Paying Suppliers One by One
Paying suppliers can become surprisingly time-consuming as a business grows.
Addition's Supplier Payments feature is designed to simplify that process.
Your finance team prepares a payment run based on the bills that are due and sends it to you for review. You'll see how much is due and which suppliers are included before anything is approved. You can also make changes.
For example, if you've agreed to pay a supplier 50% of an invoice upfront, you can adjust the payment amount. Or, if you know another payment needs to be made, such as an upcoming HMRC payment, you can add it to the run.
Once you're happy, you approve the payment run.
Rather than making every supplier payment individually, you make one transfer to the designated client account. Addition then manages the individual supplier payments on your behalf.
For businesses dealing with a large number of suppliers, this can remove a significant amount of payment admin while still giving you control over what's being paid.
VAT and Taxes: See What's Due and Approve Your Return
When your VAT return is ready, your finance team sends it to you for review through Addition.
You'll first see the important numbers, including the VAT payable, VAT reclaimable and the net amount due.
If you want a closer look, you can go into the detail, review VAT rates and filter transactions by supplier.
Once you're satisfied with the return, you can approve it from the platform.
Your VAT returns remain available afterwards, so you can return to them whenever you need to check something.
Addition's Taxes area also gives you a wider view of what you currently owe HMRC, alongside historic tax bills and payments.
This means you don't have to piece together your tax position from different documents and conversations with your finance team. You can see what's due and what's already been dealt with in one place.
Payroll: Review Pay and Submit Employee Changes
Addition also brings your monthly payroll review into the platform.
When payroll has been prepared, you'll receive a task asking you to review it.
You can see what each employee is being paid, including their gross earnings, deductions, net pay and the total cost to the company.
You can also open an individual employee's payslip when you want to check the details.
Spot payroll changes more easily
One particularly useful feature is Addition's change indicator.
If someone's pay changes noticeably from the previous month, Addition highlights it for you.
Perhaps an employee has received a pay rise or their hours have changed. Rather than comparing every figure manually, you can quickly identify where something is different and check that it's correct.
Once you're happy with the payroll, you approve it.
Manage employee changes from the same place
You can also tell your finance team about payroll changes through Addition.
For example, if someone receives a pay rise, you can enter their new salary and the date you want it to take effect.
You can also submit information about:
- Sick leave
- Maternity leave
- Pension changes
- Other important payroll updates
The information is then sent to your finance team, giving them what they need for the next payroll.
Bill and Expense Approvals: Decide What Needs to Be Checked
Not every bill should automatically make its way into your books or onto a payment run.
Addition's Approval Rules give you control over who needs to check particular bills and expenses.
You can create approval rules based on factors such as the supplier, expense category, amount, tracking information, submitter or currency.
For example, imagine you want your marketing team to review invoices from Meta. You can create a rule so those invoices are sent through the appropriate approval process before they're processed.
When a bill needs your approval, it appears in your tasks. You can open it, check the information and approve it directly.
The important part is that you choose where approval is actually necessary. Routine transactions don't need to become more complicated simply because a small number of expenses require an extra check.
Bookkeeping: See Exactly What's Holding Up Your Books
One of the challenges of outsourced bookkeeping is knowing whether everything is actually up to date.
Addition makes that much clearer.
In the Bookkeeping area, you can see the status of your books by period. If one month is complete but the following month isn't, you can see what's preventing your finance team from finishing it.
Often, that's something simple - such as a missing receipt or invoice.
Addition shows the outstanding transactions and groups them by bank account, so you know exactly where your input is needed.
Have the receipt? Upload it
If you have the paperwork, open the transaction, upload the relevant file and submit it.
Your finance team then has what they need to continue.
Don't have the receipt? Tell Addition
If you've lost the receipt or one doesn't exist, you don't have to leave the task sitting there indefinitely.
Select No Paperwork and provide some context about what the transaction was for.
You can also give your finance team information that helps them understand where the expense belongs.
This removes much of the back-and-forth that traditionally comes with missing bookkeeping information.
Ad Hoc Tasks: Keep Requests From Your Finance Team in One Place
Sometimes your finance team needs something that doesn't fit neatly into a standard bookkeeping workflow.
Addition can handle these requests as ad hoc tasks.
For example, your team might ask you to confirm how much damaged stock should be written off or upload your latest stocktake spreadsheet.
You can answer the question, attach the relevant file and complete the task directly in Addition.
Rather than important requests disappearing into an email inbox or Slack conversation, they're included alongside your other finance tasks.
Inventory: Understand Stock and Cost of Goods Sold
For product-based businesses, Addition also includes an Inventory module.
It can connect with the sales channels you use, including platforms such as Shopify and Amazon, to provide a clearer picture of your inventory and cost of goods sold.
You can analyse cost of goods sold by areas such as:
- Channel
- SKU
- Product type
This can be particularly valuable for businesses that have historically relied on spreadsheets to manage inventory.
Instead of treating stock data and financial reporting as completely separate processes, the information can become part of your wider finance workflow.
Your Finance Team: Get Human Help When You Need It
Addition isn't designed to replace every interaction with your finance team with software.
Your finance manager is visible from within the platform, and if you need to talk something through, you can book a call directly from their calendar.
This gives you the benefits of automation for repetitive work while still having access to a person when you need advice, clarification or a more detailed conversation.
It also means you know who is responsible for your finances rather than sending questions into a generic support system.
Financial Reports: Understand How Your Business Is Performing
Keeping your books up to date is only part of the job. You also need to understand what the numbers are telling you.
Addition's Reports area gives you a view of your financial performance once your bookkeeping is up to date.
You can see your profit, income and expenses over time and switch between monthly, quarterly and yearly views to identify trends.
You can also see summaries of your top sales channels and largest expenses.
For a more detailed view, you have access to financial reports including your:
- Profit & Loss
- Balance Sheet
- Aged receivables
- Aged payables
This gives you both the quick overview and the underlying detail when you need it.
How Does Addition Finance Automate Bookkeeping?
Addition uses AI, integrations and automation rules to reduce the amount of bookkeeping you need to handle manually.
It can analyse previous bookkeeping information and suggest how regular suppliers should be categorised. These suggestions are also informed by Addition's experience working with thousands of suppliers, giving the system useful context when it recognises businesses that commonly appear in bookkeeping data.
From there, you choose what happens automatically. Supplier rules can handle regular transactions, approval rules determine what needs checking, and autopilot rules can handle predictable transactions where paperwork isn't expected.
Addition also connects with other tools used by your business, helping information move between your systems with less manual work. You can explore the available connections on the Addition Finance integrations page.
Frequently Asked Questions About Addition Finance
What can I manage in Addition Finance?
Addition brings together many of the day-to-day tasks involved in managing your business finances. You can review supplier payments, approve VAT returns and payroll, submit employee changes, approve bills, provide missing bookkeeping information, manage finance tasks and review your financial reports.
Your Addition finance team works alongside you to prepare and manage these processes.
How do I know when Addition needs something from me?
Your Overview shows the tasks that currently need your attention.
Instead of checking different areas of the platform, you can log in and work through your outstanding tasks. Once they're finished, you'll be able to see that you're caught up.
Does Addition Finance automate bookkeeping?
Addition uses AI and automation to reduce repetitive bookkeeping work.
For example, it can suggest how suppliers should be categorised, use supplier rules to deal with recurring transactions and use autopilot rules for predictable transactions where paperwork isn't expected.
You still decide where human review or approval is required.
Can Addition Finance manage supplier payments?
Your Addition finance team can prepare supplier payment runs for you to review and approve.
You can make changes to individual payments before approving the run. You then make one transfer to the designated client account, and Addition manages the individual supplier payments on your behalf.
Can I manage payroll through Addition Finance?
You can review and approve payroll and send employee changes to your finance team through Addition.
This includes changes to salary, sick leave, maternity leave, pensions and other information that may affect payroll.
What happens if I've lost a receipt?
If Addition asks for paperwork that you don't have, you can select No Paperwork and provide information about the transaction instead.
This gives your finance team useful context and prevents a missing receipt from simply sitting unresolved.
What integrations does Addition Finance support?
Addition integrates with other tools used by businesses to help create a more connected finance workflow and reduce manual admin.
You can see the available connections and learn more about them on the Addition Finance integrations page.
Can I speak to my finance manager?
Yes. Your finance manager is shown inside Addition, and you can use Book a Call to schedule time with them when you have a question or want to discuss something in more detail.
Manage More of Your Finances in One Place
Running a finance function involves lots of small but important jobs.
Supplier payments need approving, payroll needs checking, VAT needs reviewing, receipts need finding and someone needs to make sure the books are actually complete.
Addition Finance brings those jobs into one place and makes it clear when your input is required.
Instead of spending your time managing the process, you can focus on the decisions that actually need you while your finance team and Addition handle more of the day-to-day work.
Want to see what managing your business finances with Addition looks like? Book a call with our team for a personalised walkthrough of the platform and to see how Addition could work for your business.
