Close the Books on Inefficient Month End Closings

Despite the warnings from medical officials, most people thought the COVID-19 virus would have about as much impact as other modern epidemics that have come and go in the past 20 years. Most of us thought the whole thing would be over in a few weeks and life would return to normal. Few people could have imagined the impact it would have on the world, let alone your business. Within weeks of discovery, the virus turned into a global pandemic that has forever changed the world as we know it while we patiently wait for a vaccine.

To meet federal, state, and local guidelines established to slow the virus down, every company in the world had to quickly adapt and evolve new operating processes in order to function. This was especially true when finance and accounting teams found themselves with two weeks to find an effective and accurate way of closing their books remotely.

Historically, accounting teams have been hesitant to adopt a remote workforce mentality because they generally prefer to be in the office where they can print documents, build closing binders, and talk to their teammates face-to-face. Working remotely meant a lot of emails being sent back and forth to share critical documentation and confirm task completions.

The ripple effects across industries

For certain industries, the pandemic and remote closing present its own set of specific challenges – challenges that they’ve never faced before.

• The tech industry is still flush with cash, and companies are still merging and buying other smaller companies, which means double the work as two sets of books now have to be reconciled each month.
• The retail industry, hit hard by the numerous stay-at-home orders, now has to reconcile their books while facing new accounting challenges from CARES Act compliance and retail rent breaks.
• The banking and insurance industries are both handling much higher volumes as they are seeing an influx of new accounts as businesses are processing a lot of new loans and people are buying more health and life insurance.
• Non-profit organizations are reporting record numbers of donations and are being overwhelmed with transaction reconciliation.
• While manufacturing is seeing a boom in critical supplies and logistics is doing their best to handle the stress put on their supply chains, both are still required to report results and maintain bank loan covenants.

Overall, the biggest challenge faced, regardless of industry, is the managing a close without being able to talk to the team in person and not having cloud versions of the financial software that everyone can access from home.

Close with confidence. Open a world of possibilities.

The key to a successful financial close – in person or remote – is clear communication and the ability to easily collaborate. A remote closing solution should provide you with the framework you’re used to, but instead of having the standard procedure printed out in a binder or stored on an internal server, it’s laid out with ease in a virtual system.

Our Adra solutions were created to provide you with the same structure you’re used to, but with the protocols and dependencies that strengthen your processes, allowing you to complete financial closes more efficiently, whether that be from home or at the office.

Developed to modernize your entire close process, the Adra Suite allows you to increase efficiency and standardize functions. Removing the over-reliance on in-person and face-to-face meetings, Adra gives you the ability to communicate easier, share documents quicker and more effectively while organizing and storing your financial data in a secure, easy-to-use system.

With an intuitive interface that is easy to use and set up, the Adra Suite is comprised of four programs, Task Manager, Balancer, Matcher and Analytics that empower you and your accounting teams to complete closing faster, more accurately and more efficiently, so you can spend more time on more important tasks.

Adra Task Manager

Adra Task Manager streamlines and centralizes your internal processes. By creating a template for a dependency-based checklist, you can create ownership and accountability within your team and reduce the risk of inaccuracies in your closing. Simply start the process with the click of a mouse and each member of your team will be notified when they’re up.

Adra Balancer

With Adra Balancer, we took the repetition out of the reconciliation process with automation that tracks and stores your month-by-month data in the cloud. Consistent data flows over automatically so you don’t have to waste time inputting repetitive data every month.

Adra Matcher

Adra Matcher offers more accuracy and reliability by importing your bank records and matching them automatically in an audit-ready format. Cut the time it takes to close by eliminating manual data input. And with the ability to import new data types and set up complex matching rules you’ll have more flexibility in tracking down errors.

Adra Analytics

Adra Analytics gives you insight into every detail of your financial close with endless reporting capabilities that keep your processes moving and transparent. With custom reports that give you the data you need, you can track activity over multiple periods, enabling you to investigate and correct incorrect data.

Faster, smarter, more accurate closings. Reconcile that.

While many companies have come up with band-aid solutions for remote closing, the fact is the world was already moving toward work-from-home, even before the pandemic hit. To be competitive in this new normal, you must be agile as opposed to fragile. You have to adopt solutions that will benefit you now – and in the future – rather than rely on antiquated processes that have proven ineffective in today’s climate.

With Adra, you’re not just getting a financial software solution that will help you close your books remotely and more efficiently. You also get a partner that believes in cultivating a strong relationship with our customers.

Through our Adra Innovation Portal, we take your feedback and turn it into reality. To date, out of the top 15 ideas presented to us through the portal, 13 have either been implemented or are in the planning stages now.

Remote and ready. Time to open up to a new way to close.

Before you start your next month’s closing process, schedule a demo with Adra to automate, optimize and never look back. Reconcile that.