Financial Consolidation simply defined is the process of collating financial information from various business units or business entities within the organization for reporting purposes. This process involves several steps which vary from company to company such as data importing, mapping of GL to a single chart of accounts, and producing of outputs or as others would call it – the consolidated financial statements.
The process of consolidating financial statements can vary greatly in complexity depending on what the company is accustomed to or what the company prefers to see in its reports.
Financial consolidation has traditionally been done in Microsoft Excel regardless of the size of the organization or the complexity of the process. Because of the use of Microsoft Excel, the process becomes even more complicated than it needs to be because excel spreadsheets were never designed to foster team collaboration which is needed when consolidating. In addition, the output becomes too tedious because excel spreadsheets are notoriously known for being error-prone.
In this vein, financial consolidation automation has been gaining popularity and strong support from CFOs and finance managers as it makes a huge difference to the efficiency of an organization.
For arguably all finance departments, time is a luxury so financial consolidation automation aids in efficient time management of the entire department. Basically, a financial management system simplifies and automates all the recurring processes. This urges staff to focus their attention on matters that require their critical thinking and prompt resolution.
Needless to say, financial consolidation automation is one of the many ways to empower and better enable a finance department to execute deeper analysis of the company´s current and potential financial health.
Other known advantages of financial consolidation automation are: decrease in month end close time, improvement of the quality of the financial close process end to end, earlier release of monthly reports, and increased data transparency.
Financial Consolidation Automation through Performance Canvas
Many companies are looking for ways to not only improve the way they consolidate their financial data but also ways on how to speed up their financial close without unnecessarily compromising the quality of their reports and their compliance to non-standard and regulatory requirements.
Performance Canvas Financials was originally designed from the ground up by the same experts behind today´s established consolidation solutions. Performance Canvas was designed to answer the persistent problems that remain unaddressed in many financial consolidation solutions.
It has a strong focus on improved statutory compliance, increased transparency, accountability, and efficiency especially within large multinational companies with very complex structures that span across various reporting standards such as IFRS and local GAAP.
Performance Canvas distinguishes itself from other solutions through its simplistic and intuitive approach. It aims to provide business users full control of the solution from business rule mappings to integration of data among various line of business systems to maintaining the solution.
The enabling of finance/business users to map rules and dimensions makes sure that the solution can sustainably support all the organization´s objectives.
Lastly, Performance Canvas strong inclination towards improved accountability and transparency as well as the automation of accounting adjustments that are necessary in the execution of equity eliminations, calculations of minority interest or any other adjustment in terms of complex ownership ensures that the entire financial consolidation process is not just automated but also streamlined.
In the years to come, Performance Canvas will continue to see constant and ambitious functional enhancements to the solution in order to make preparation of quarterly or annual financial statements, management reports, and other types of analysis easier and more reliable.
To know more on how to improve your financial consolidation, visit www.performancecanvas.com or email info@dspanel.com to see an online demo of the solution.
DSPanel offers cutting edge technology platform for business analytics, planning, and visualization. DSPanel designs, builds, and operates with the end users in mind. Performance Canvas was created by DSPanel to answer the unarticulated needs of the market not addressed by previous available solutions. With Performance Canvas, information is transformed into valuable business insights for the business executives to utilize in their decision-making process. DSPanel currently has over 2500 organizations deploying their solutions.
