Technology Adra by Trintech

Leverage Breakthrough Simplicity to Improve Your Financial Close Process


Sponsored by Adra by Trintech

This white paper helps financial leaders understand how to leverage technology (automation) to optimize their financial close process.

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Breakthrough simplicity and automation brings clear benefits to the financial close in terms of efficiency, transparency, and speed. In organizations lacking automated processes, key tasks can be delayed due to a dependency on institutional knowledge, folklore, and manual tasks. Automating your closing process can reduce risk, improve efficiency, and allow more time to analyze financial statements. We’ll take a holistic view of the financial close and will highlight where how and why automation can be implemented throughout each phase of the process.

Why Automate Your Financial Closing Process?

The closing process is one of the most fundamental indicators of the efficiency of your financial infrastructure, and is the critical foundation that must be in place before your finance and accounting team can even begin to optimize its role as a true consultative business partner and trusted advisor, assisting in achieving strategic goals and creating shareholder value. Automating your financial close is critical because:

  1. Financial statements are the ultimate scorecard for a company and must be accurate.
  2. The critical information obtained from financial close results is used to perform accurate and timely analysis – both internally and externally. 

Taking a Holistic View 

In taking a holistic view of the close, an organization can understand the connectivity, impact and dependencies of each phase as the foundation of a breakthrough simplicity and automation transformation.

The financial close process starts with the: 1) Transaction Accumulation and Reconciliation, and Sub-ledger Close phase. This phase focuses on the accurate recording and reporting accounting transactions during a specific and defined period – monthly, quarterly or annually. The accurate processing of transactions will ensure that reconciliations, the sub-ledger close and financial reporting is timely and correct.  

All activities that comprise the financial close are driven by cutoff dates that ensure financial results are accurately reported as part of the 2) Corporate Close and Consolidation Process. 

The “Final Mile” of the process is the 3) Analysis and Reporting Cycle. This critical phase focuses on the accuracy and analysis of a company’s financial results and can be unsuccessful if too much time and resources are spent in the prior phases without automation. 

The Components of the Financial Close

 

Where to Automate

The table below suggests areas for automation within each phase. Our major premise is that the automation of manual processes saves time, reduces cost and reduces risk allowing resources to focus on the financial reports, results and analytics. 

Conclusion 

Visibility to accurate financial information and underlying operating metrics are critical to your management team in any economic environment, but particularly in times of uncertainty, where rapid and knowledgeable responses to changing business and market dynamics are imperative. The faster and more accurately you can generate the financial statements, the faster the management team can quickly understand how the business is doing, identify business process improvements, and address critical decisions with urgency and precision.

Visit our website for more information on how to simplify your close.