Is the lack of workflow hindering your ability for an accurate and fast period-end close?

If your business doesn’t follow a period-end close workflow, you could be throwing money out the window. Establishing a workflow not only delineates the processes for all parties involved, but it also presents a written record of that process, making it open for future improvements that might speed up the close or further ensure the data’s accuracy.

Period-end closing involves:

  • Data collection
  • Data scrubbing
  • Reconciliation
  • Validation
  • Report generation
  • Report review

The involved parties include the various individual lines of business, staff accountants, financial analysts, and finance team members.

The importance of a period-end workflow

The goal of all organizations is to produce timely and accurate financial statements within a reasonable period of time after the period-end close. These financial statements are critical to decision makers as they help to understand the health of the organization prior to making financial decisions.

Broken business processes suck time and money from an organization. Time and resources lost managing broken processes does not need to be considered “the cost of doing business.”

By following a workflow to close the books, your team can accomplish your close as quickly as possible, ensuring that the data provided to your decision makers is always the most accurate.

Best Practices

Incorporate procedures into daily operations

Whenever possible, incorporate as many of your period-end close needs into your daily operations. Doing this work ahead of time will help the speed and organization of your close immeasurably.

Work closely with other departments

If it makes sense to obtain data from other departments, set that into action in your workflow. If the requirement for this information is written into the workflow, you can depend on quality data in a timely manner, freeing up your accounting team to accomplish other accounting tasks.

Be open to improvements

Your workflow might not start out as the quickest or the most accurate. That’s okay. By writing a workflow, you are able to revisit, revise, and readjust as often as necessary until your process is ironclad.

Don’t forget the software

Flexi has a full suite of products that can help you manage your close and your workflow; store information in a full content management system and seamlessly access it in FlexiFinancials.

Flexi’s open, non-proprietary architecture is based on the latest Microsoft standards and tools. It supports industry standard databases such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server and allows for easy integration through web services. The Flexi applications utilize Microsoft SharePoint to provide browser based, enterprise-wide content portal and workflow capabilities.

Is your Current Accounting Software Helping you to meet your Period-Close Deadlines on Time?

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.

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.