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3 MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN MAKING BUDGET CUTS

Key points

  • Cutting your budget can help you better accomplish your financial goals.
  • Budget cuts only work if you can stick to them.
  • Common mistakes, such as being unrealistic in spending limits, could hurt your ability to accomplish your objectives.

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When you are hoping to accomplish important financial goals, cutting spending is often necessary. This means reworking your budget to limit expenditures.

Unfortunately, many people end up making mistakes when trying to change their budgets to prioritize savings or investments for the future. These errors could end up hurting their efforts to accomplish their objectives since it could mean they don’t end up sticking with the new spending limits they’ve set.

So, how can you make sure this doesn’t happen to you? Be sure to avoid these three big errors to maximize the chances your budget cuts will pay off.

  • Being unrealistic about your expectations

If you’re anticipating that you can slash your grocery spending by 50% or get rid of all recreational spending from your budget, you’re simply setting yourself up for failure. The reality is, there’s typically only so much you can cut from your budget when it comes to necessities. And a budget that doesn’t give you a chance to enjoy any leisure activities probably isn’t one you’ll stick to for long.

To make sure you’re proposing budget cuts you can live up to, you should track your current spending to get an idea of where you are and then look at what you can give up over the long haul.

  • Not consulting with a partner

If you’re married or in a committed relationship, it’s not just your spending that’s going to affect your budget. You need to get your partner on board with your proposed budget. This is true even if you maintain separate finances. After all, if you decide to slash your dining-out budget but your partner still expects you to go out to dinner every weekend night, that’s going to be a big problem.

If you and your partner can work together to identify budget cuts that you’re both in favor of, you are far more likely to be successful at reducing spending. Not only will you both be willing to look for cheaper options, but you can also help hold each other accountable since you have a shared goal of reducing certain expenditures.

  • Cutting out splurges you value

Finally, while it can make sense to cut out some fun spending, you don’t want to set yourself up to live a life of deprivation. You’re likely to end up splurging even more once you get tired of denying yourself everything you enjoy.

Instead of stripping out all of the enjoyable spending you do, consider what splurges have the most value. This will be different for everyone. For example, some people may prioritize buying their daily latte, while others value being able to dine out at work because it gives them an important break during the day and a chance to socialize with coworkers.

By carefully evaluating the spending that means the most to you, you can identify other areas to cut that are more superfluous and you’ll find that keeping on your spending plan isn’t as difficult. Hopefully, by taking this step as well as by working with your partner to make realistic cuts, you can sustainably reduce your expenditures and make a budget you can live on over the long term.

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thefintech.info

WHAT IS THE GLOBAL MINIMUM TAX DEAL AND WHAT WILL IT MEAN?

A global deal to ensure big companies pay a minimum tax rate of 15% and make it harder for them to avoid taxation has been agreed by 136 countries, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said on Friday.

WHY A GLOBAL MINIMUM TAX?

With budgets strained after the COVID-19 crisis, many governments want more than ever to discourage multinationals from shifting profits – and tax revenues – to low-tax countries regardless of where their sales are made.

Increasingly, income from intangible sources such as drug patents, software, and royalties on intellectual property has migrated to these jurisdictions, allowing companies to avoid paying higher taxes in their traditional home countries.

The minimum tax and other provisions aim to put an end to decades of tax competition between governments to attract foreign investment.

The global minimum tax rate would apply to overseas profits of multinational firms with 750 million euros ($868 million) in sales globally.

Governments could still set whatever local corporate tax rate they want, but if companies pay lower rates in a particular country, their home governments could “top up” their taxes to the 15% minimum, eliminating the advantage of shifting profits.

A second track of the overhaul would allow countries where revenues are earned to tax 25% of the largest multinationals’ so-called excess profit – defined as profit over 10% of revenue.

Following Friday’s agreement on the technical details, the next step is for finance ministers from the Group of 20 economic powers to formally endorse the deal, paving the way for adoption by G20 leaders at an end of October summit.

Nonetheless, questions remain about the U.S. position which hangs in part on domestic tax reform the Biden administration wants to push through the U.S. Congress.

The agreement calls for countries to bring it into law in 2022 so that it can take effect by 2023, an extremely tight timeframe given that previous international tax deals took years to implement.

Countries that have in recent years created national digital services taxes will have to repeal them.

The OECD, which has steered the negotiations, estimates the minimum tax will generate $150 billion in additional global tax revenues annually.

Taxing rights on more than $125 billion of profit will be additionally shifted to the countries where they are earned from the low tax countries where they are currently booked.

Economists expect that the deal will encourage multinationals to repatriate capital to their country of headquarters, giving a boost to those economies.

However, various deductions and exceptions baked into the deal are at the same time designed to limit the impact on low tax countries like Ireland, where many U.S. groups base their European operations.

 

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thefintech.info

TOP 5 BEST FINANCIAL DATA APIS FOR IMPROVED FINANCIAL SERVICES IN 2022

The financial world is progressing as we speak. Today, financial data APIs are changing the game for financial analysis. These financial data platforms are built intelligently, benefiting anyone in the said industry. Professionals, in return, can access better insights and financial decisions. To prove how financial services peaked at their prime, here are our top 5 best financial data APIs this 2022.

What Is Financial Data API?

Financial data APIs refer to a platform that deals with facilitating transactions, information access, payments, and other related activities. So why use API? It’s because it improves everything you could expect from a financial data management platform. It encompasses better collaboration between partners, data gathering in stock markets, interaction with partners, customer experience, etc.

What Is the Best Finance API?

To know which financial data API suits you best, check the different kinds out there. There’s one for a brokerage to gain information on stock and cryptocurrency markets to draw better trading conclusions. There are also those for banking so people can easily connect the financial data platform to their bank account for a modernized banking experience.

Now, the goal here is to get a hold of financial information at your disposal. The best financial data platform must let you access financial data. But it should also integrate with other financial applications and the data that come with them. Most importantly, it should be reliable enough to be used in the field of finance.

#1 Financial Modeling Prep

Several financial data APIs may offer insightful data, but a majority still require one to look elsewhere when it comes to accessing data on stocks and other complexities. Here’s where Financial Modeling Prep differs and prospers. Financial Modeling Prep is a one-stop financial data platform built for a thorough fundamental analysis of data.

This financial data API brings productivity and accuracy to financial analysts. They can access all data in numbers and language in financial statements, even those suppressed in the footnotes.

It offers an array of financial data at yearly, quarterly, and daily intervals. It has a pretty extensive documentation section that deals with detailed steps on how to pull data using Python, Scala, R swift, and other languages. You can also retrieve financial data, including a balance sheet, income statement data, etc.

Key Features

  • Stock value: Financial Modeling Prep provides discounted cash flow metrics that can be calculated at specific points in time (daily, quarterly, or annually). It helps determine whether a stock is under or overvalued. You can check this out in their stock API. Another thing — the API supports more than 40,000 stocks in different exchanges.
  • Fast, accurate, and developer-friendly: Financial Modeling may be built by experts in the field of finance, but it’s also made for developers. You can learn more about their stock price API regardless if you are adept at being a developer or not.

Aside from that, this financial data platform also boasts data accuracy, which topples other platforms in the market, while the majority is in CSV format. Data comes straight from SEC filings, serialized by people working behind the curtains. Going back to being developer-friendly, every endpoint is made available in JSON format. The API has 50+ endpoints and continuously welcomes another one every week. You can also get an on-demand custom endpoint if you wish.

  • Credible data source: Every gathered financial data came from trusted sources. These sources are SEC, FRED, CFTC, or Tiingo Inc. Despite coming from expert sources, Financial Modeling Prep is still actively working on improving and maintaining quality data.
  • Quality data: To make informed decisions, it guarantees quality data. You can also get various economic data such as inflation rates, GDP, economic calendar, and more.

Pros

  • Data quality and depth
  • Wide market coverage
  • Unique data set with alternative data (price targets / US number of employees / Ownership datasets)
  • Backed up by a dedicated customer service
  • Provides real-time stock price
  • Can report in a daily, quarter, or annual format
  • Can report stock from 30 years back
  • Offers personal, professional, and enterprise pricing

Cons

  • Uptime differs from every pricing

#2 Intrinio Financial Data API

Intrinio puts forth every financial data you need. You can start your financial product building right away from market data, company fundamentals data, options data, or SEC data. Moreover, all this info at hand is not standing by themselves, too. All are powered by advanced data quality technology, which is then given through Intrinio’s financial data API and other tools.

The financial data API provides historical, intraday, and end-of-day real-time data that you can utilize in any endeavor of your choice. You can even download on-point historical market data dating back from 5 up to 50 years. But at the end of the day, you may have a different view of what you’re seeking.

Fortunately, there is a subscription-based model to figure out what exactly you’re looking for in data. Besides that, Intrinio’s offerings can also assist in shaping your investment strategies because of their variety. You can access data associated with diverse asset classes, analysis of financial statement information, estimates, forecasts, and ratings. At the same time, you also get a heap of industrial and economic data as well as those for holdings, metadata, and more.

Key Features and Advantages

  • Supported by a dedicated customer service
  • Functions as a single source for US stock price data APIs
  • A secured platform to avoid financial worries
  • Helps launch and grow your options trading through available reliable options data
  • Real-time quality data for your financial product building

#3 Pluggy

Another competitive financial data API to close the gap between you and the data you need is Pluggy. You or your users’ financial data is accessible to your financial analysts through a single API. With that, you can improve business operations and services for your customers. The edge with Pluggy is that you’re free to do as you please with your gathered data, and they have the exact features to help you out, too.

When you think about finances, you often think about credit cards, fraud, costs, bills, payments, loans, etc. Whatever it is that you thought about, Pluggy has a single API that covers it all. You can develop decisive credit models, mitigate fraud, reduce costs, send payments easily, etc.

With this financial data platform, you don’t just have real-time access to your clients’ investment place among all brokerages and banks. You can also aggregate this information from available financial institutions. In that way, you can commit to personal financial management assistance.

Overall, Pluggy is one of the best choices to build everything in the field of finances. Expect an increase in conversion and a scalable business right away. Do all these by simply accessing financial data to offer better services and improve solutions and offers.

Key Features and Advantages

  • Automatically categorizes customer accounts
  • Data encryption and LGPD compliant
  • Dashboard to see financial data in the easiest way possible
  • Built by developers and intended for developers as well

#4 Validis

Successful businesses rely on financial analysts to view data. Validis does the same thing by providing a regulated view of your customers’ financial data. This financial data platform is capable of handing out deeper insights and informed decisions.

Consequently, it automates a view to making the job a lot less complicated for analysts. Hence, this removes an insufferable amount of time spent gathering relevant data and carefully dissecting it.

Unlike other financial data APIs here, Validis is of great use for customers applying for loans. With a digitized way of gathering financial data and a simplified means of the overall facilitation, you can guarantee neat, consistent, and formatted data. But it’s not only the customers who can experience this case. Financial analysts can also have an easier way of focusing on data and gathering value-driven insights.

Key Features and Advantages

  • Validis drastically cuts cost and the time to decide by acquitting a standardized view of financial information just within a minute
  • Lets you receive financial data in a standardized form regardless of the size, source, type, etc
  • The financial data comes with an insightful dashboard to simplify all information
  • Its Datashare feature automates the composition of valuable insights gathered from data

#5 Xignite

Xignite has been one of the most innovative financial data APIs over the years. It’s designed with adequate coverage and usability to let you reach your investors. The quality of their data and their services allow you to maintain clients, and at the same time lead you to success. It’s because Xignite’s roster of expert developers built a Cloud API that seamlessly supplies financial data to consuming applications.

With Xignite, you can have a taste of robust and easy access to financial market data. After all, it has been setting standards for both usability and scalability for over 14 years. Because of its notable lengthy service, the width of coverage won’t be left behind. Xignite covers real-time, historical, essential, and references data.

Even the entirety of asset classes, equities, crypto, FX, ETFs, options, bonds, futures, credit markets, and more are available. Another good thing about Xignite is that every API available includes unlimited usage. So, there is no need to purchase disordered packages as well as per-call charges.

Key Features and Advantages

  • Gain institutional quality data from 250 leading data providers
  • Has a global financial data API coverage for all classes of assets
  • Multiple data types available, including real-time and historical data
  • Scalable and robust so that you can use their services with no fuss
  • Unlimited usage and different ways to receive data

Best API for Financial Data

Nothing can ever facilitate more straightforward financial data sharing for professionals and customers than financial data APIs. With a reliable and quality financial data platform, you can easily bridge the gap between you and every facet of the financial sector. The best API we can suggest is Financial Modeling Prep through its one-stop solutions. Other choices are Intrinio Financial Data API, Pluggy, Validis, and Xignite.

 

 

 

 

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thefintech.info

5 THINGS DRIVING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PAYMENTS

Evolving customer expectations alongside technological advances are driving innovation that prioritizes speed, near to real-time payments, frictionless transactions, and decentralized models. Compounded by the pandemic, the significant growth of digital commerce has led to record payment volumes in most markets. At the same time, market competition is driving fee decreases, a challenge to traditional players to maintain the same levels of profitability using existing payment infrastructure. Against this backdrop, payments are part of financial services that have undergone rapid and transformational change over recent years.

Take a look at five of the main drivers of change to the way payments to work and to the broader payments ecosystem.

  1. Moving to a cashless world

Consumers’ shift to digital channels is driving demand for seamless fulfillment and instant gratification. A recent Capgemini World Payments Report survey found an increase of 24% to 46% of respondents who had e-commerce accounting for more than half of their monthly spending from before the pandemic to now.

With 91% of the global population expected to own a smartphone by 2026, according to Statista, these customers are unlikely to return to the way things were done before, now having experienced the speed and convenience of digital payments and greater services.

  1. Faster payments

Demand for instant transactions is driving change in cross-border payments, international remittances, and e-commerce. Previously, mirroring the instantaneousness of a cash transaction via electronic means had been an ongoing technical challenge. Now, real-time clearing and settlement facilities in many markets make processing payments almost instantly possible.

Frustration with the latency and cost of the traditional banking model has led to the emergence of alternative options. Innovative solutions such as the P27 initiative in the Nordic region show how fintech can blend with conventional systems to provide better payments infrastructure for all.

  1. Embedded finance

Embedded finance, where financial products are added to the transactional flow in non-financial platforms, has been a much-discussed topic in financial services for the last couple of years. With consumers demanding ever more convenient, frictionless ways to make payments using various devices from wallets to wearables, embedded or contextual payment options are adding convenience and speed to the payments process.

On the merchant side of things, meanwhile, embedded finance helps them to better understand the best payment terms to offer customers, provide seamless checkout, request payment, and offer financing such as buy now pay later (BNPL), all within a single customer experience.

  1. Leveraging payment data

The diverse range of digital touchpoints involved in a cashless payments ecosystem provides vast amounts of data. This is of significant value to banks and fintechs to grow client relationships based on analytics and insights. Companies that can unlock the true value of payment activity data by leveraging powerful AI and ML tools can offer more efficient, tailored products in a more secure, protected environment.

We can expect the full implementation of the messaging standard ISO20022 to be a potentially vital part of improving the amount and quality of payments data available in the industry. ISO20022, as the global standard for payment messaging, provides, for the first time, a shared language to be used for transactions made by anyone, anywhere.

  1. Financial crime

Rapidly increased e-commerce provides an opening for fraudsters. The use of AI and ML allows payment companies to detect fraud earlier by learning the financial habits of clients so that unusual behavior is highlighted. Fraud prevention security measures, like voice-activated transactions, biometric authentication, and smart assistant payment verification, all have a part to play in securing the future of digital payments.

The primary dilemma in modern payments is the trade-off between customers (demanding easier in real-time transactions actioned across devices) and regulators (concerned about increased exposure to fraud). Payments companies, therefore, need to strike the right balance delivering new user-friendly processes that are highly secure and compliant.

What’s next in payments?

The payments ecosystem is a varied one with lots of layers and companies filling niche use cases. On the front, we are seeing more forms of instant payments and innovations such as digital wallets and embedded finance, and BNPL. Disruption of the payment industry is moving on from providing these user-friendly frontend mobile apps to improving backend processing and the infrastructure used to execute payments.

Overall, the journey towards more digital, open, and real-time operations mirrors the way society at large is increasingly living online. Many of the trends covered in this article may be set to converge in the emerging metaverse space, although the shape of that is some way from being determined. What will money look like in the metaverse? How will current payment rails integrate with a borderless ecosystem?

 

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thefintech.info

3 STEPS TO IMPROVING YOUR ACCOUNTING DATA ANALYTICS RESULTS

From the tax preparer who provides guidance that will help ensure their clients are in the most advantageous position next tax season, to the bookkeeper who advises on expected cash flows, and everywhere in between, everywhere you look today, data drives insights and decisions.

But the concept isn’t a new one for accountants. Descriptive and diagnostic analytics ranging from inventory availability to variance analysis have been performed since Luca Pacioli created double-entry accounting. Long before user-friendly dashboards existed, we used Excel spreadsheets and charts. And before Excel? We did it by hand.

Thankfully modern accountants can leverage advanced technologies to perform analysis at scale and speed, dramatically increasing the amount of accounting and non-accounting data available to shape our analysis.

Our biggest challenge today with accounting data analytics isn’t a lack of data; it’s how quickly the sheer amount of data available can become overwhelming. As the utilization of big data in accounting continues to grow and more and more data becomes available for analysis, it’s becoming a challenge to determine which data is relevant, let alone leverage the data to make more informed decisions.

So how do you find and separate the relevant data? You need to know your audience, and what you’re trying to accomplish and utilize technology to prevent information overload.

Identify Your Audience

Why does the audience matter? Because while the data doesn’t change, the story that the data tells may change from person to person. That’s not to say that the data tells one stakeholder the sky is blue and another stakeholder that the sky is yellow. But different stakeholders may have very different questions. Knowing who will be asking questions is just as important as the question itself.

Let’s consider time and billing data. The most common application of this data is to determine utilization. Staff and seniors would be interested in the details of how they compare to their peers, such as details about where they are exceeding expectations (or falling behind). Managers probably don’t want quite that level of detail, preferring a summary view that highlights only those who fall outside the first or second standard deviation.

However, managers and partners may be interested in learning more about staff efficiency and would benefit from an analysis of which staff is most effective at various types of engagements to assist with planning. For example, highlighting that a particular staff member spends 25% more time on a complicated audit in the pharmacy space compared to an audit of similar complexity in the restaurant or construction space.

Even if the audience is just you, it’s important to identify that. All too often when we are the only audience the question becomes secondary, and analysis becomes the purpose – which is not the best use of your time.

Know What you’re Trying to Accomplish

To perform an effective analysis, you need to have a question, purpose, or objective. Data analysis for the sake of analysis, while fun, isn’t productive. A poorly constructed question can lead to costly and time-intensive data reviews that don’t accomplish anything.

Before diving into the data, determine what you’re trying to discover. What is the goal of this analysis? What decision-making will it facilitate? What outcome would be considered a success or a failure? Remember, data analytics results will only be as good as the questions you ask – when preparing your questions, also consider factors such as your audience, strategic goals, and budget.

If you’re struggling with understanding what questions to ask, start broad – even if it’s just “what’s up?”. Don’t stop there, though. While it’s often helpful to start broad, the question needs to be specific to get valuable (and actionable) insights.

For example, let’s say that your goal is to increase profits. Driving data analysis with the question, “how do we increase profits” may not result in useful results. A better place to start would be to ask, “where are there opportunities to increase capacity with my existing staff?” or, “what engagements were the most profitable last quarter, and how can we replicate that success?”

With a clear understanding of what you are trying to accomplish, the analysis is more focused, and it’s easier to determine which data is relevant.

Implement Automation to Prevent Information Overload

Consider the data that accounting firms and tax preparation businesses track, often without thinking about it. How are you using the data you already have?

There’s internal data, from time tracking and how clients are served to practice management data such as billing, collections, and business development. There are also client data and information about the client that is collected during the engagement process. And there’s data that’s a mix of the two – client and prospect interactions with internal content such as emails, webinars, websites, and social media.

Technology has allowed us to collect the data listed above and so much more. Technology has also allowed us to perform our data analysis faster and at a much larger scale. But there are downsides to all advances – and for accounting data analytics, information overload is one of them.

Technology created the problem of too much data. It can also help us find the relevant data. Advanced technologies such as machine learning and AI can automate the base data analysis, giving structure to unstructured data and providing accountants with the most relevant information. With automation sifting through the available data to identify information relevant to the question and the audience, we gain back the capacity to focus on other things.

And with that additional capacity, we can perform higher-level data analysis, find the answer to the question, and understand how to shape the answer for the intended audience.

Complex data manipulation and analysis is a critical part of any business strategy, regardless of firm or practice size. Knowing which data is relevant – and having the tools to assist in that determination – is even more critical. With the right questions, an understanding of who the audience is, and automation to help perform base analysis at scale and speed, accountants can more easily guide their clients – and their business – towards success.

In Wolters Kluwer’s annual industry report white paper, over 800 tax, auditing, and accounting professionals told us how they are leveraging people, processes, and technologies to go beyond limits and drive growth.

 

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thefintech.info

WHAT IS ACCA & FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING & WHY IT ENSURES AVERAGE SALARY JOB

ACCA’s financial accounting has 3 subjects, Financial accounting (FA financial accounting), Financial Reporting (FR financial report), and Strategic Business Reporting (SBR strategic business report).

ACCA can be simply understood as the elementary, intermediate, and advanced courses of financial accounting. According to ACCA, after learning FA, you can go to a company as a junior accountant, after learning FR, you can become a financial manager of a company, and after learning SBR, you have the vision of a corporate CFO (financial director).

Financial accounting

In a general context, “accounting” mostly refers to “financial accounting”. In the eyes of people who do not know how to do it, a financial accountant is a bookkeeper who keeps books.

But in today’s business society, the functional scope of financial accounting has long gone beyond bookkeeping. The goal of accounting is to provide accounting information relevant to a business that helps users of financial reports to make economic decisions.

Accounting is “magic”, using magical spells to turn a complex enterprise like a giant into a mirror-like “four tables and one-note (four statements and one-note)”, reflecting the company’s financial status, operating results, and cash flow. Outsiders only need to analyze the “four tables and one note” to have a clear understanding of this behemoth.

If you want to survive in a certain place, you must master the local language if you want to travel unimpeded in the commercial society and the capital market, then financial accounting is a must-have skill, which is why the most famous schools have bachelor’s degrees in economics and management.

International Accounting Standards

International Accounting Standards are UK-led standards and have been accepted and used by more than 120 countries, aiming to provide internationally convergent high-quality accounting solutions. The companies will ask you about the characteristics of IFRS during the interview. Therefore, a fresh graduate with an ACCA background will naturally be given priority when submitting resumes to companies. When competing for high-quality positions in corporate finance, auditing, consulting, and even brokerage research, the knowledge of financial accounting often appears in the written test interview questions.

Financial management

If you think that finding a job is still a long way off, then many students want to manage money and buy a fund stock or something. Listening to the wind is like buying indiscriminately in the rain, then the next leek will be decided to be you. However, if you learn financial accounting well, you can analyze reports independently, and analyze corporate valuation from fundamentals, your investment will be more rational. In addition, starting from the second year of the sophomore year, students will actively participate in activities such as “business competitions” that are more cost-effective for resumes.

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