You wouldn’t be alone if you don’t have a formalised financial close task management system. Although you surely have some processes, instructions and checklists in place for closing the period, it can be challenging to make them standardised and efficient. It is time to look into fully visible financial close task management solution if you:
have closing task checklists that are not aligned at the individual or company level
lose valuable time in between tasks
cannot quickly check closing task progress at the group level
Instead of switching between several windows and manually entering and requesting data in emails and spreadsheets, stand-alone financial close task management software significantly streamlines the closing process. This puts task assignment, performance and reporting all in one place – a dream come true from a project management perspective.
A single day can make a big difference in terms of how long it takes to complete financial closing. How long does it take you to get to the finish line? Are you always able to be absolutely certain that all legal entities have completed all closing tasks on time?
Use our tips for diagnosing unhealthy financial close processes and food for thought on the causes to dig deeper on these questions and identify room for improvement. You can also take your self-assessment a step further by comparing your current state with the three starting points in this roadmap to closing task management excellence.
Accurate and timely financial reporting is highly dependent on every single one of the hundreds of tasks being completed on time and correctly throughout the entire group of companies. For instance, the hard work of 97 legal entities could be in vain if just three out of 100 entities are late or make a mistake. As a result, group-wide finance team leaders can hardly expect to sleep well at night if they can’t easily stay on top of closing task progress throughout the group.
First of all, with hundreds of closing tasks repeated many times, you are challenged to align closing task processes and maintain process visibility. This is a key starting point on the road to achieving substantial productivity gains by deploying automation in an intelligent and comprehensive manner and eventually integrating the entire financial close process.
Take away the guesswork and join this webinar to learn how purpose-built financial close task management software can significantly streamline your period-end closing process.
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.
Harri is a software industry veteran helping enterprise organisations to transform record-to-report processes with the help of intelligent automation and a pan-European network of partners.