Faster Period Close Is Important – Here’s Why Flexi Software Is Up to the Task

Closing the books faster is a permanent goal in the accounting sphere, but a successful close can’t just be fast–it also needs to be reliable and accurate. Flexi’s 25+ year history is rooted in serving industries where the need for security, performance, and speed are paramount —particularly the need for a faster period close.

Flexi’s robust accounting software is uniquely designed to enable a continuous close process, even in the most challenging environments:

  • Real-time financial data
  • Multi-entity consolidations
  • Real-time, consolidated financial reporting
  • Detailed drill down capability to simplify audit and compliance
  • Multi-currency conversions

Flexi customers gain the ability to move seamlessly through the entire close process—soft close, adjustment period, and final close—with time to spare (and a lot less stress along the way).

Close the books quickly—and accurately

Unlike other accounting systems, Flexi was purposefully built to enable a faster period close, with every step of the process carefully designed within one single platform. This seamless integration of native apps allows real-time financial data to easily flow, wherever it is needed.

This design delivers superior speed and accuracy, ensuring a smooth progression through soft close to final close, with the ability to answer all the auditor’s questions before, during and after.

With Flexi cloud-based software, the following can be accomplished with ease:

  • Consolidate ALL your company financials in real time
  • Convert multi-currencies into a common currency
  • Pull data from different GLs into a standard format
  • Generate reports with just a few simple clicks
  • Distribute thousands of reports with complete confidence

Provide answers to all the auditor’s questions

Learn more about the many benefits you’ll experience with Flexi’s financial management software, saving your organization time, money, and stress.

Flexi

Flexi offers a full suite of products to help your accounting staff perform and deliver–and save time while doing it.

With Flexi, you can streamline and automate labor-intensive financial management functions using accounts payable, general ledger, project management, and fixed asset solutions.

Flexi is an industry leader for a reason. With expertise in all aspects of accounting and 25 years experience, the Flexi team can offer the best of the best. Even better, Flexi offers cloud-based web services that not only streamline processes, but also make data accessible 24/7 from any device with an internet connection.

Learn more about Flexi accounting software solutions, or call 800-353-9492 to set up a demo today.

Are you feeling the pressures to close faster?

The pressure to close the books as fast as possible is higher than ever.

According to Adra Match, 90% of survey respondents said they feel they are under pressure to close faster, while only 39% are satisfied with the quality of their closing process and only 28% trust the numbers reported at their month-end closes. Another survey showed that less than 75% of survey respondents were able to close their books in six business days or less.

So what can be done to shorten the closing period? Who benefits from a shorter close?

Best practices for a faster close

If you’re feeling the pressure to close faster, there are a few best practices worth looking into.

Don’t wait to gather data

Don’t wait until the last minute to do every aspect of your closing. By asking departments outside of accounting to provide data throughout the month, and by spending incremental time doing daily or weekly closes, much of the data you need will already be ready to go by the end of the month–allowing you to close faster, and more accurately.

Save time by evaluating closing needs

Not all statements need to be closed on a monthly basis. Maybe some aspects of your close only need to be accounted for quarterly. Analyze your business needs and make informed decisions about what can wait to be closed to help save you time in the long run.

Use specialized software

Closing the books requires several accounting tasks that are time-consuming and tedious. With the help of the right software, much of these processes can be automated. For repetitive tasks that are repeated on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, set parameters to run the required reports automatically to avoid spending time rebuilding and rerunning the data required.

Flip to future projections

Instead of analyzing the period after it happens, try projection and estimation. By forecasting, projections and estimates will become more accurate over time, allowing your business more credibility, deeper analysis, and better traction.

The case against a faster close

While pressure is on for faster closes, keep in mind that if closing faster jeopardizes the accuracy of your numbers, then it pays to slow down and solidify your data. CEB data shows that the average close has dropped from nine days to six. And, in the past few years, 90% of finance departments have included “shortening the accounting close” in their top priorities. In fact, CEB research suggests that top-performing accounting teams that provide better decision support tend to close slower.

The bottom line

If the pressure is on to close quickly, see if the above best practices can be implemented by your staff, but bear in mind that speed isn’t everything–accuracy is the number one concern of any organization’s accounting team.

Why a Daily Period Close Feature is Important for any Accounting Software

Daily period closing refers to the process of your staff recording daily collections from all sources, including cash, checks, and credit cards.

For some, a daily close may seem overwhelming. However, instituting daily closings can be hugely effective in managing a company’s accounting, ensuring that financial data is always accurate, and pinpointing discrepancies before they become issues. Daily closing also helps eliminate accounting discrepancies at the end of the month by keeping an accurate, day-to-day record.

The three biggest benefits of daily closing are reconciliation and theft prevention, catching human error, and prepping for month-end closing.

The importance of daily closes

Daily closings can help in a variety of ways, including preventing employee theft, catching human error, and assisting with the month-end closing.

Reconciliation and theft prevention

While virtually all business types can benefit from daily closes, it is especially useful for retail and service companies who may run the risk of employee theft. When reconciling on a weekly or monthly basis, it is more difficult to trace the missing dollars. By using a successful day-end close process, employees are held accountable for the collection of cash for goods and services rendered. Businesses with extensive monthly transactions also benefit from reconciling cash on a daily basis, allowing staff to know how much cash is on hand at all times.

Catch human error

Other benefits of daily closes include the ability to trace discrepancies to human error, like an incorrectly-keyed amount or payment method. Additionally, any adjustments to collection amount can be recorded as well, like cash taken from a register for an unanticipated payment. It’s also important that daily deposits match with your daily close amounts.

Prepping for month-end close

When activity is recorded as it happens on a daily basis, the month-end close experiences fewer discrepancies and moves at a faster pace. And, much of this day-end closing can be farmed out to departments outside of accounting. Daily or weekly reports can be generated by other staff, and accounting can reconcile these on an on-going basis, rather than waiting until the month-end close.

Start daily closing today

If you aren’t already, start the process of daily closing. Putting time and effort into the frontend will free up time during month-end closing, making month-end closing quicker and more reliable. Daily closing will also help you manage and track cash flow and theft.

Flexi offers a full suite of products designed to help you with your biggest accounting pain points, including closing. Check out Flexi.com for all of your accounting software needs.