Most organisations rely on separate applications for account reconciliation and other parts of the financial close process such as journal entries and closing task management. The lack of robust integration between these can cause delays and inefficiencies during the closing period – a couple of days when time is of the essence. This is the third and final episode of the Account Reconciliation Process Excellence webinar series in which we explore the benefits of continuous account reconciliation and financial close process.
System complexity: the gap between account reconciliation and financial close process
Timing is critical in the financial close process and having to switch between different applications, interfaces and windows make the whole process take more time. Some of the factors that really add to the complexity problem are:
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The lack of automatic linking of closing tasks and related reconciliations
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The inability to automatically create a journal entry directly from a reconciliation automatically post to ERP
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The inability to automatically post a journal entry from reconciliation to ERP and refresh reconciliation figures live
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The inability to reconcile accounts by linking them back to the journals, which have related supporting evidence and approvals
You are in double complexity trouble if your integration between closing task systems and account reconciliation is not live. Batch upload integrations may require your team to switch between programs, even more, to force a manual update when time is of the essence or to check when the data has flowed through to the other systems. When it comes to the size of your company’s system architecture, in other words, how many different systems your company uses for account reconciliation and financial close management, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Continuous account reconciliation process
Live integration allows you to tie together disparate financial close tasks in a single connected platform and stay on top of all closing tasks from one dashboard. This greatly reduces complexity and saves time by decreasing the number of windows your team has to switch between. Instead of waiting for data to flow through to the rest of the financial close process, you can just keep working without unnecessary delays. When you find errors during reconciliation, you will be able to simply fix them on the spot without having to open seven different windows and re-enter data across systems. For instance, you can select an incorrect line during reconciliation and automatically create a journal. The updated figures instantly flow through the ERP system and can be refreshed on your reconciliation screen without delay. This takes task automation and streamlining to a whole new level, allowing your team to do essentially anything and everything from a single interface.
Webinar speakers:
Christopher von Walzel, International Sales Executive at Aico Group.
Christopher is a sales executive with over 7 years of experience in supporting large companies with the on-boarding process. He can help you arrange demos, provide information about Aico to support your business case and guide you from the first meeting to the final decision.
Clive Jefferies, Product Manager at Aico Group.
With over 30 years of experience in finance and IT, Clive has in-depth knowledge of record-to-report accounting processes and intelligent automation solutions. Having worked for the likes of IBM and Microsoft as well as consulting large global companies, Clive holds the expertise on end-to-end financial close processes.
