According to the Adra Match Market Survey in 2013, 61% of accounting professionals are unhappy with their financial close processes. That’s a lot of disgruntled accounting professionals, and for good reason: closing can be time consuming, difficult, monotonous, and frustrating with the wrong tools.

To maximize efficiency during closing, your organization needs the right software. Is your current accounting software helping you meet your period-close deadlines on time?

The top issues that prevent companies from meeting their period-close deadlines are communication, reconciliation, accuracy, and collaboration.

Communication

To encourage departments to provide your staff with data necessary for closing, start with the simple act of communicating with stakeholders. It may sound overly obvious, but the truth of the matter is that outside departments may have a tenuous grasp of the processes, workflows, and needs you have to close the books on time. Provide education to encourage understanding of how a quick and accurate period close can benefit all members of the organization.

Reconciliation

Reconciliation has historically been a tedious, manual process with a high probability of error. Software that automates reconciliation can align data from a variety of sources, saving you the time of formatting inconsistent data. Some close management software products include intelligent transaction matching, which provides even greater automation for reconciliation.

Accuracy

With reconciliation being such a manual process, it’s no surprise that data accuracy can come into question. With such limited time to close the books and such a variety of inconsistent data sources involved in the close, it is easy to make mistakes. Be smart about your software choice: choose products that streamline processes into repeatable functions, eliminating the opportunity for human error.

Collaboration

If your business is working in silos where each department manages its own data, how can you rely on the results? Collaboration across departments and entities is a necessity in accurate closing. Cloud-based systems afford the opportunity for real-time, sharable data that anyone with the right permissions can access 24/7 via internet browser. This way, you know the data that is being accessed by different departments and staff members is always the most current, most consistent data available.

Meet your period-close deadlines with Flexi

Choosing software that helps ease the pain points of communication, reconciliation, accuracy, and collaboration is the first step in obtaining more manageable period closes. The full suite of Flexi products aims to streamline accounting processes, saving you time closing the books on one period so you can move on to the next. Flexi products are cloud-based, non-proprietary, and compatible with Microsoft standards.

Ditch the manual, error-ridden processes: trust the accuracy of your data and reconcile with ease using state of the art Flexi technology.