The horrors are real when it comes to financial reporting. Your ability to effectively operate your organization can be severely hampered by nightmare realities such as disparate data systems and a lack of security (and let's not even get started on manual data entry and re-entry). The worst part is that without the proper technology to help streamline and integrate financial reporting processes, your business will continue to have cascading errors, which will eventually result in the worst of all horrors: performance bottlenecking. With Halloween right around the corner, it’s the perfect time to find out how the power of financial reporting software can help you bury these six common issues in the graveyard where they belong.
Horror #1: Ghastly Outdated Financial Reporting Software
While transferring all of your data to a new system may seem like a daunting task, employing outdated reporting software can result in much bigger scares, like data inaccuracies and the looming threat of unprotected data. When software limitations force you to experience the repeated nightmare of manually entering and re-entering data, delays, and error-prone reports, it's time to wake up and switch to an all-in-one financial reporting solution. Not only will you avoid the risks described above with a central database connecting your source systems to a secure central location, templates that are constantly updated with the most recent data, and straightforward workflows to easily disseminate reports to stakeholders, but you'll also actually see your data come to life and have more time to give the analysis and insights that make your business run.
Horror #2: Wicked Unconsolidated Excel Spreadsheets
Getting lost in a never-ending cycle of copying and pasting within Excel spreadsheets? When you're working with continually shifting actuals, it can be nearly impossible to locate the figures you need and maintain control of everything. Even if most financial departments are used to this technique, there's no reason to keep putting them through the wringer. By implementing a financial reporting solution you will be able to connect your source systems to one central database and automatically consolidates your data into a single location. This means you will be able to spend less time consolidating your spreadsheets and gain more trust in your numbers.
Horror #3: Devilishly Poor Financial Reporting Security
Afraid of the security risk of uncontrolled desktop spreadsheets? You should be! Outdated operating financial reporting software creates a weak link in your system that can leave your sensitive data unprotected. Smart security and data permission are essential features your financial reporting tool must have as it lets you control data access and manage permissions down to the individual user level to keep your data safe. In other words, all templates are locked and secured to stop users from tampering with them and making errors. To find out exactly who has used your template and where your figures came from, you can even drill down into the history of a spreadsheet. What a treat.
Horror #4: A Single Cauldron for all the Financial Reporting Systems
If your organization uses more than one software application, as most do, and those programs don't communicate with one another, you have a serious problem. Duplicate data entry is a tedious, error-prone, time-consuming, increasingly difficult to manage, and outright expensive process. Choose a financial reporting software that can quickly import Excel and CSV files by integrating with your preferred cloud and on-premise applications. You may make up lost time and have unwavering confidence in your numbers with automatic data loading into a single source of truth.
Horror #5: Bone-Chilling Formula Errors and Template Versions
The last thing you want to do is dig your own grave with human error in your financial reporting. One error, no matter how tiny or unimportant, could cause all of your other data to be skewed, resulting in inaccurate reporting, planning, and forecasting. Just thinking about it gives us the chills. Having the ability to lock and secure your templates with data permission features all while continuously being updated with the latest data is a crucial feature to have in your financial reporting software. It will allow you to prevent users from creating errors and to say goodbye to version control issues and broken templates once and for all.
Horror #6: Frightening Cash Flow Forecasting
We all know that cash flow is the lifeblood of any company’s operational health (and very existence, frankly). Any successful business must have a thorough understanding of its historical, current, and projected cash flow. With a financial reporting tool, you can quickly build real-time reports using ad hoc reporting tools and executive-level reporting templates, connect your data to Power BI dashboards, and share your reports with management to plan your company's cash flow.