Building Blocks to Financial Close Management in 3 Steps

Like everything else in business, there is increasing pressure to deliver more value with fewer resources.

More and more CFOs are thinking about how their department can have a greater impact on the company-wide business by swinging the workload pendulum from number-crunching to analysis, reporting, and strategy. So, how can you organize a high-performing and successful finance department?

Streamline Your Financial Close in 3 Key Steps

1. Unified Status Overview

Are we done yet? Have we hit our milestones? Has everyone followed our guidelines and procedures? Some questions are too important to wait until you’re up against your deadline.

2. Standardized Approval Workflows

Flawed routines. Unclear approval responsibilities. Difficulties handling rejections and revisions. A time crunch causing managers to just take a random sampling of account preparations. There are many causes for violating the so-called “Four Eyes Approval Principle,” and all of them are far from industry best practices.

3. Safe Retrievable Documentation

In a spreadsheet-driven environment, supporting documentation for open balances and specifications is often handled in a number of ad-hoc ways.

How Can Your Financial Close Add More Value Today?

The three areas we’ve identified, status overview, approval workflows, and documentation handling, are critical building blocks for any successful digital transformation of the financial close. Taking the next step in financial close management will make your organization more compliant, strategically resilient, and best of all, keep your auditors satisfied.

In this guide, we explore in detail these three key steps to improve your financial close management.