Financial Close & Consolidation

In today’s volatile and sometimes disruptive economic environment, CFOs and finance organizations need to be able to lead the organization’s decision-making processes with insight, speed and confidence. Yet many finance organizations are still bogged down by inefficiencies in routine processes such as the period-end financial close and reporting cycle and are unable to shift their time to value-added analysis and decision support.

The financial close, consolidation and reporting process can be relatively easy in a small enterprise that is using a single, centralized GL/ERP system, operates in a single currency, and has a simple legal entity structure. However, as organizations grow and evolve in sophistication, the process can become quite complex. In a mid-sized to large enterprise, the financial close and reporting process spans the following activities:

• Closing out the sub-ledgers (e.g., accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets) and general ledgers (GLs) at multiple locations
• Collecting and consolidating financial results from multiple locations and systems
• Performing account reconciliations, booking the tax provision
• Producing financial and management reports
• Completing statutory reporting and filings to regulators

As organizations grow and evolve in complexity, the financial close and reporting process can cross multiple locations and departments, involve multiple systems, and consume a great deal of the finance team’s time and resources. Most organizations execute the financial close and reporting process on a monthly basis, with additional tasks and even more rigor on a quarterly basis. The year-end close then requires yet even more time and effort.

Any time and resources freed up from the mechanics of the process can be allocated to value-added activities, such as analyzing financial/operating results and supporting strategic business decisions across the enterprise. Moreover, having the ability to execute an efficient financial close and deliver timely and accurate financial and operating results allows CFOs and finance executives to lead the organization’s decision-making processes with insight, speed and confidence.

While accounting departments performed consolidation and reporting on a manual basis for many years, in today’s world there are several types of software tools used to support these processes:

• Spreadsheets – they are cheap and widely available, familiar and easy to use. However, they are error-prone, missing key financial consolidation functionality, and have no audit trails.
• GL/ERP System – the general ledger module found in most ERP systems has currency translation, journals, and basic intercompany eliminations. However, they were not designed to integrate data from other GLs, don’t support multiple financial consolidation hierarchies and offer limited reporting capabilities.
• Financial Consolidation Software – is designed to integrate data from multiple GL/ERP systems, has advanced financial consolidation features, robust reporting, and full audit trails.

Purpose-built financial consolidation software applications found in today’s corporate performance management (CPM) software solutions are becoming the preferred approach for mid-sized to larger enterprises. Purpose-built financial consolidation tools also provide easy to use reporting capabilities that can automatically generate consolidated financial statements, as well as management reports, dashboards, board books, presentations and spreadsheet-based analysis in a fashion that is not conceivable in a transactional system.

While these systems have historically been deployed in on-premises data centers, they are now available as cloud or software as a service (SaaS) offerings, making them easier than ever to deploy and manage. A good example of a purpose-built application for financial close, consolidation, reporting, and more, is OneStream’s Intelligent Finance Platform.