The Top 5 Advantages Of Using A Financial Close Solution

Introduction

Financial Close is one of the most crucial and yet tedious processes in the Office of the CFO. Even with the most sophisticated ERP systems, hard-working finance professionals at successful companies still find it challenging to close books on time.

According to our Record to Report survey conducted in partnership with FECG, over 50% of the respondents said they take around 7 to 14 days to close books and heavily depend on in-house systems/spreadsheets. This leaves the finance teams only half a month to focus on other value add tasks apart from financial close. ” Disparate systems, manual work, and error-prone data are some of the key challenges that hinder the efficiency, accuracy, and timeliness of the financial close process. In this blog, we will dig deeper into these challenges and understand how implementing a financial close solution can not only address these challenges but also bring out many value-add benefits to the financial close process.

Let’s take a look at some of the common challenges that have an impact on the financial close process:

How can a financial close solution help?

“Because when you, as a finance leader, can access more information and make more-informed decisions – with simple tools and without the aid of IT – you can do more, faster. You can actually drive change instead of merely reacting to it.” Forbes

A dedicated financial close solution can address these gaps in ERP by streamlining the financial close process, end-to-end. It can not only address the fundamental challenges of automating manual, repetitive tasks; but also add advanced capabilities to enable data analytics and drive actionable insights. A financial close solution can allow smooth collaboration by offering visibility to all the stakeholders in the different levels and stages of the close process. This, in turn, can result in a faster and error-free close process.

The advantages of using a cloud financial close solution

An integrated, intelligent cloud financial close solution can optimize and enhance the capabilities of a basic ERP system. Here’s how:

1. Day Zero Close

Enable day-zero close by reducing time-consuming, last-minute manual tasks through automated workflows and pre-configured templates in the record-to-report process, which helps in:

• Zero day would make the picture ready without delays (zero day)
• Because it saves time from a lot of manual work that allows the financial team to focus on other critical financial processes like budgeting, forecasting and analysis.

2. Real Time Visibility

Offer analytics to gather real-time insights across large volumes of finance data by using Artificial Intelligence. This feature helps organizations to track progress and identify bottlenecks. And helps to make more informed decisions.

• Provides transparency into the financial close process;
• It makes it easier for teams to collaborate and work together as most of the current status will be visible to everyone.
• It helps to improve communication between teams.

3. Improve Accuracy

Eliminate dependencies on disconnected spreadsheets with a secure, collaborative, cloud-based spreadsheet-style interface optimized for finance.

• It provides an improved and clear picture of an organization’s financial health, which helps to make better decisions.
• It helps in reducing the risk of errors and omissions in financial statements.
• Better accuracy means greater transparency into a company’s financial activities.
• Accurate and timely reporting can help build trust and confidence with investors and other stakeholders.

4. Increased Efficiency

Use advanced capabilities such as Artificial Intelligence for errors and anomaly detection, enabling timely action and avoiding the month end delays

• This helps organizations meet deadlines and reduce stress for the finance team.
• An efficient close process helps to save money by reducing the need for overtime pay, additional staffing etc.
• Efficiency can improve consistency and reduce the risk of errors.
• Eventually it leads to increased employee satisfaction and retention.

5. Streamlined Collaboration

Offer a single source of truth across the finance department and accelerate and improve decision-making for finance and accounting leaders.

• Teams will work together to ensure that they follow established processes and that financial reports are accurate and complete.
• This can prevent errors caused by data entry

Conclusion

Enhancing your existing ERP architecture with a financial close cloud solution can seem daunting. But it doesn’t have to be if you partner with an expert.

The Highradius Autonomous Accounting solution for Financial close enables:

• AI-powered accounting anomaly detection
• Up to 40% reduction in month-end close time
• Audit-friendly, SOX compliant Record-to-Report operation
• Task and reporting accuracy

The financial close process can be complex, but by leveraging technology, automation, collaboration and innovation organizations can streamline the process and improve accuracy and efficiency.