Accounting
Webinar: Best Practices for the Month-End Close on Oracle NetSuite
Despite the best of intentions, the month-end close is prone to spiraling out of control if the right controls aren’t firmly in place.
From mixed messages to incorrect information due to unintended, erroneous entries, getting everything to tie out on time is a problem faced by many companies.
As one of the most popular cloud-based ERPs on the market, Oracle NetSuite offers thousands of businesses a unified business management platform with industry-leading ERP, CRM, and e-commerce solutions. Recently, FloQast Head of Product Marketing Blake Oliver hosted a webinar with Amy Knust, a senior manager at Eide Bailly, and Ami Modi, corporate accounting manager at MongoDB to discuss how businesses can get the most out of their month-end close using NetSuite.
The Rising Cost of Suite Experience
at Eide Bailley
With unemployment amongst accountants so low — just 1.6 percent in Q4 — attracting and retaining talented accountants, especially ones accustomed to using accounting tools like NetSuite, is becoming more and more of a challenge for businesses. To find the right fit, companies are adapting in different ways.
“There’s a lot of pressure on the workforce out there, and a lot of competition, particularly if you’re trying to hire someone with NetSuite experience,” said Knust. “We want to hire top talent, but in terms of accounting resources with NetSuite experience, we’re finding we can identify candidates who have expertise in other applications and cross-train them in NetSuite.”
Finding the Right Fit
When it comes to assigning roles in NetSuite, most users default to thinking of team members’ individual strengths and weaknesses. According to Knust, this might not be the best way to approach the assignment process.
“I highly recommend customizing roles before assigning them to employees,” said Knust. “Try to think of roles as a set of functional responsibilities, as opposed to being equivalent to a user. Don’t think of it as, ‘This is what Mary does, so I’m going to create a role for Mary.’ It’s more of, ‘What should an accounts payable clerk a GL financial analyst be responsible for,’ and, designing those roles with controls in mind. To ensure you’re SOX compliant, you should consider a separation of duties, which will help prevent fraud and avoid any issues with your audit later.”
More Powerful Closing Tools
As companies using NetSuite can attest, the many tools capable of integrating with the ERP can significantly improve its effectiveness in several important ways.
MongoDB
“There are a lot of areas in your balance sheet that can’t necessarily be reconciled out of the box in NetSuite,” said Knust. “That’s when it makes sense to utilize a more sophisticated close management solution like FloQast, where you can accumulate all your information in one place, everyone can have access to it, and you can track your progress of reconciling each of those individual balance sheet accounts.”
After implementing FloQast, Modi and the MongoDB team were pleasantly surprised at how seamless the integration was.
“FloQast’s hashtag feature — which I find extremely useful — makes our reconciliations tie to NetSuite without any extra effort,” she said. “Additionally, all of our reconciliations are saved in Box, so all of our team have access to the reconciliations. It makes it easier to share and access across our different teams.”
