Top 5 Ways to Simplify Your Financial Close Process

Enterprise finance faces mounting pressure to make sure their teams deliver a fast, accurate financial close. However, transforming the financial close is considered expensive, time-consuming and complex. As a result, modernising the month-end close is put off, resulting in a high number of enterprise finance departments still grappling with manual processes, inefficiencies and unnecessary complexities. These challenges create bottlenecks which slows decision-making and increases the risk of errors. 

But there’s a solution: adopting simplified, standardised and automated workflows. By reducing the reliance on manual processes and utilising automation, finance teams can streamline operations, increase visibility and boost productivity. 

Here are five actionable ways to simplify your financial close process:

1. Automate Routine Tasks for a Faster Close 

Manual processes like reconciliations and journal entries consume a disproportionate amount of time and resources. Accounting teams often spend hours performing repetitive tasks, only to find themselves double-checking for human errors. These inefficiencies lead to frustration and diminish the capacity for high-value work. 

A typical example: finance teams can spend up to 3,000 hours annually—equivalent to 125 full workdays—posting as many as 30,000 journal entries manually. Beyond the time investment, manual errors often ripple across the organisation, causing delays, financial inaccuracies and compliance risks. 

Finance teams can spend up to 3,000 hours annually—equivalent to 125 full workdays—posting as many as 30,000 journal entries manually.

How to take control: 

Financial close solutions like Aico’s Journal Entry and Account Reconciliation modules automate routine tasks, reducing errors, improving accuracy and accelerating the entire financial close. For instance: 

• Automated journal entries: Predefined rules, specific to your enterprise, automatically send entries for review and approval based on parameters like type, value and complexity.

• Streamlined reconciliation: Aico’s industry-unique live integration with ERP systems ensures reconciliations are accurate and reflect the data, so time is no longer wasted on error-correction. 

" Our customers often allocate a significant portion of IT resources to integration error correction. With Aico’s pre-built mappings, we’ve achieved a 65% reduction in errors during integration testing."  

- Sampo Laakkonen, Senior Consultant & SAP Development Lead at Aico

The result? Automation doesn’t just save time, it frees up your team to focus on analysis, insights and strategic initiatives, unlocking their full potential.

2. Centralise Close Task Management for Better Control

One of the greatest challenges in financial close management is the lack of visibility and control over workflows. Organic growth as well as M&A activity gives rise to disorganised and disparate processes. This, spread across departments, teams or even continents, can lead to bottlenecks, overlooked responsibilities, broken communication and missed deadlines. 

When tasks are scattered across disparate tools like spreadsheets, emails and several third-party or in-house software platforms, monitoring progress becomes nearly impossible. Teams often scramble to find who owns what, what the most up-to-date information is, and who needs to complete what, leaving critical work delayed or incomplete. 

How to take control: 

Centralising close task management transforms the process. Aico’s Close Task Manager is built from hyper-configurable templates that allow you to create your ideal workflow and standardise it across all business entities. This ensures that every task has a clear owner, a deadline and a real-time status update. 

With Aico’s solution, you can: 

• Monitor the completion of tasks in real-time, eliminating the guesswork

• Assign responsibilities clearly to avoid duplication of effort

• Use templates to create repeatable processes for consistency across periods 

"With Aico, we have clearly defined roles and responsibilities in the closing process, which has significantly improved our efficiency." 

— Ralph Wieskamp, Head of Accounting Services at Sanoma

Centralisation doesn’t just boost productivity, it instils confidence in your processes, making every month-end close smoother than the last. 

3. Standardise Processes to Eliminate Complexity 

Many finance teams face inefficiencies due to inconsistent practices across departments, business units or regions. Teams may use varying templates, reporting formats or systems that lack alignment, creating unnecessary friction and confusion. 

In fact, a study by Ernst & Young study revealed that only 38% of companies have formal policies governing their financial close process. The result? Inconsistent practices lead to delays, errors and compliance risks. 

How to take control: 

Standardised processes provide structure and clarity for the directors of accounting operations. Aico’s solutions help organisations enforce consistent practices by introducing standardised workflows. This ensures that every team, regardless of location, works from the same playbook. 

For example, you can: 

• Create uniform templates for reconciliations and journal entries

• Automate approval workflows for faster decision-making

• Ensure compliance with internal policies and external regulations 

By eliminating complexity, standardisation simplifies collaboration, reduces errors and accelerates the financial close process. 

4. Increase Visibility with Real-Time Reporting and Analytics 

A common frustration for finance teams is the lack of visibility during the close process. Without real-time information, decision-making is delayed, and teams are often left waiting for updates or approvals. 

Genuine, real-time insights are essential for finance teams to act proactively. For instance, they allow teams to address missing or late tasks. 

How to take control: 

Aico’s Journal Entry solution connects directly to ERP systems, providing a single source of truth. Features like real-time error detection, validation and approval workflows ensure that journal entries are processed quickly and accurately. You can see everything from one dashboard which allows you to drill down into individual journals and access supporting documentation with a few clicks. 

Benefits of real-time visibility include: 

• Faster identification and resolution of discrepancies

• Improved collaboration across teams

• Instant access to the status of each journal for informed decision-making 

"Aico’s real-time connectivity to Microsoft D365 has transformed our financial close process, making it faster and easier to manage." 

— Satu Horko, Finance Manager at Sandvik Construction and Mining Oy 

Real-time insights empower teams to work smarter, ensuring a faster more reliable close process. 

5. Ensure Compliance and Reduce Risk with Built-In Controls 

Compliance is a non-negotiable aspect of the financial close process but managing it manually is a daunting task. Without proper controls in place, organisations risk audit failures, penalties and reputational damage. 

The complexity grows further when conducting the financial close across multiple ERP systems. Traceability and accuracy are paramount but challenging to maintain manually. 

How to take control: 

For example, you should not close your asset ledger before calculating and posting the depreciation for the period. Aico’s CTM can automate the sorting of the depreciation and closing of the asset ledger as dependant tasks, ensuring that these tasks are performed in the correct order. 

Benefits of automated compliance tools include: 

• Reduced reliance on manually performed tasks

• Faster preparation for audits with ready-made documentation

• Confidence that your financial close meets all compliance standards 

If you would like more information on how powerful solutions like Aico can help reduce errors in the financial close, please get in touch or watch our demo.