Blog & Newsroom

The Human Cause of 4 Major Accounting Errors and How to Eliminate Them

The reliance on manual controls and procedures remains a major cause of some of the most common accounting errors. We’re not just talking minor errors, such as an unmatched invoice, either. These manual processes result in material misstatements of financial results or business performance. All too often, they go out externally to regulators and investors. This is despite investment—even recent investment—in ERP systems, workflow software and various point solutions. And just to be clear, for this blog I am just talking about human error.

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Four Undetected Errors That Add to Close Stress – And How to Fix Them

Anyone working in finance knows how stressful the monthly financial close can be. Immovable, tight deadlines and the manual nature of much of the process results in long hours that impact staff wellbeing, turnover, and often result in a reliance on temporary staff at this peak time. Frustrated staff have to work within sub-optimal processes that have evolved over years and don’t have the bandwidth to redesign them. Some of the biggest headaches are the errors that accrue but go undetected during the month and only come to light at the height of the period-end scramble.

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Manage and Perform: Why Workflow Software Isn’t the Answer for Your Financial Close

When we talk about finance automation and how it can help make the period-end close a non-event by reducing manual effort and errors and improving visibility and control, some people wrongly believe they are already doing that. “But I already have workflow software,” is a common response I hear. The truth is, however, that while workflow software does indeed automate to a certain level it tackles only around 30% of the close process. It automates the reminders and some of the handoffs and handovers,

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Ditch the Spreadsheet and Make Your Close Faster and More Accurate with Finance Automation

The month end close is a busy and stressful time for any finance team. One of the key elements to maintain some order within this chaos is task or checklist management. It’s vital to ensure the hundreds of closing tasks are all completed successfully, on time and in the right sequence. The problem is that most organizations still manage their close checklist in a very manual and inefficient way. This creates more stress and errors for those carrying out the tasks and has a negative impact on the accuracy and timeliness of closing the books and reporting group figures.

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Why Automating Journal Entry Upload Is Just the Tip of the Period Close Iceberg

Journal entries are a necessary but manually intensive and time-consuming part of the financial close. For large multinational organizations, some companies within the group might easily process more than a thousand journals each month. We’ve dealt with organizations that do a million manual journals a year. Some level of automation is clearly required to handle that volume of journals, but most organizations are missing the big prize. Think of it like the tip of an iceberg.

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What’s the Secret to Making Your Close a Non-event? Focus on Automating the First Mile

What’s the secret to making your close a non-event? Focus on automating the first mile. The financial close is nothing short of an ongoing battle for many companies. Finance teams come under the same intense pressure at the end of every month, quarter and year as they struggle to complete the hundreds, if not thousands, of interdependent tasks that feed into the close process. At the same time the close is undoubtedly critical to trust,

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What Does Moore’s Law Mean for Business?

Moore’s Law wasn’t intended to be a law. When Gordon Moore observed, in 1965, that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit was doubling roughly every two years it was exactly that: An observation. Albeit one that held true for half a century and dictated semiconductor development roadmaps. However, more recent discussions have questioned whether Moore’s Law still applies in today’s technological landscape. Intel (two years ago, no less) changed its roadmap to push back new chip models and thus throw Moore’s Law right out of the window.

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What Happens When You Automate the Finance Department?

With increased pressure to do more with less, almost all business units are now required to work in a more agile way to maximize efficiency – and the same is true of finance. The CFO and finance department should seek to collaborate with the wider business, to find ways to modernize and digitize tasks and processes wherever possible using knowledge from the people who perform the tasks day-in, day-out. Finance is a crucial part of any business,

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