Whitepaper

The Executive’s Guide to a Faster Month-End Close

Accountants are known for crunching the numbers, so it’s no surprise they’re concerned about wasted hours and days in their schedule. With the impact of COVID-19 on the budgets and calendars of many businesses, management is starting to worry more too. 

Given the added layers of complication, the monthly close process is becoming unwieldy for many companies. For some, the accounting team spends a week or more each wrapping up the close, which is a whole lot of days taken away from focusing on growing the business and weathering the current storm. 

Long, drawn-out closing procedures are a luxury most just don’t have right now (though we hesitate to call them “luxurious”). But what can you do to tighten the process, shorten the close, and refocus your accounting and finance team on the crucial work at hand?

Let’s take a look at how accounting departments can achieve a faster month-end close without busting the budget.

Cloud-Based Accounting to the Rescue

The monthly close is all about information. Confirming the accuracy of information by cross-checking that information against other information…well…you get the idea. Luckily, we live in the information age. It shouldn’t be that hard, right?

And, it doesn’t have to be. With the right tools, you can empower your accounting team to do their job faster, more accurately, and with less stress, leaving them with time and energy to solve big problems and help move your organization forward. 

One of the biggest time drains in the close is gathering up all the information you need. If you’re not an accountant, think of it like getting ready to have your taxes done. It’s not so much the actual work that takes time as the scramble to find all the paperwork, make sure everything is there, and then double-check to make sure it all ends up in the right place. 

That’s where accounting workflow automation comes in. By acting as a central hub for all that information (Editor’s Note: Please, no more “information.” Thanks.), teams can cut down on the back and forth while improving transparency overall. Now combine that with the ability to keep track of what’s been done and who did it and the close become much more civilized. Take it a step further and bring in automation to spare your team from some time-intensive manual data entry and you’ve got a recipe for a faster month-end close. 

What does that success look like? We’ve crunched some numbers of our own to show you the powerful impact this can have on your business every month, especially in a climate like this. Check out the whitepaper today.

John Siegel

John Siegel is a Corporate Communications Manager at FloQast. Prior to joining the company, he wrote about Los Angeles-based tech companies for Built In LA. You can follow him on Twitter @JVNSiegel.