5 Tips to Improve Your Financial Close Processes

Your books may be closed, but how much time and money did you lose from clinging to outdated methods? Be proactive by evaluating your financial close process now to avoid reoccurring issues later.

5 Tips For an Improved Financial Close Process

1. Review Your Original Goals for Last Year

It’s tempting to leave the past entirely behind, good or bad, but that is not the way to ensure lasting success. Start by reviewing last year’s goals.

2. Review Your Abandoned Projects

Similar to reviewing your goals, you should dive deeper into unfinished projects within your department. While there could be a variety of reasons that you were unable to take a project over the finish line, here are a few of the most common:

• Workflow: Was communication a key issue?
• Employee Development: Were employees not fully challenged?
• Efficiency: Did project stages hit bottlenecks?
• Documentation: Did you lose track of your manual documentation?
• Visibility: Did you not see issues coming?
• Compliance: Did you have to learn new regulations?

3. Complete a Risk Review

To remain compliant with audits and various regulations across different industries and geographies, the financial close must be completed effectively. As part of your full-year review, determine which areas hold the highest areas of risk and how financial automation could improve them by removing human error.

4. Review Your Successful Projects

Take a look at the projects you completed successfully, and try to understand how they are different from the ones you weren’t able to finish.

5. Identify Upcoming Opportunities for Collaboration and Communication

After these reviews are finished, the Office of Finance should be looped into organizational planning and contribute to building value throughout the company.

Most often, people find they have been allowing manual methods and their related issues to compound, and the lack of efficiency and effectiveness has cost them time and money. With a renewed perspective, you have the opportunity to gain improved efficiency and visibility by implementing automation into your financial close.

Download the tip sheet to read these five key tips in greater detail.