In most companies, the financial close process is massively complex and difficult to handle. Closing the books is one of the most important things accountant professionals need to do at the end of a month, quarter, or year.
Finance departments often face pressure at the end of a month to quickly send invoices, make payments, reconcile and review transactions and post adjustments.
Let’s look at some red flags that indicate your company’s financial close needs help.
No Defined Protocols
In most companies, finance managers execute closing tasks with the help of institutional memory because there aren’t any pre-defined protocols for the process.
Instead of just relying on experienced people for guidance, businesses need to create a list of activities that need to be performed to make sure nothing is missed.
If you outsource accounting services to an outside service provider, make sure they have a thorough understanding of task durations, dependencies, and other things involved in the process.
Automation
In addition to mainlining a list of clear tasks, your finance workers should also use software that allows them to mark complete tasks as ‘done’ and track the project’s progress.
Automating the closing process can tremendously improve its transparency, speed, and efficiency. If the finance procedures in a company aren’t automated, the finance department fails to perform efficiently. Many times important tasks get delayed for extended periods just because of the absence of a key member of the team.
So, if you notice frequent delays on trivial accounting tasks, check out the software and automation systems used in the finance department and upgrade them if needed.
Some other issues that can indicate your financial close needs improvement include limited or no accessibility to real-time data, use of manual methods in report creation, and more.
Need Help?
Want to improve your financial close procedures? Looking for an outsourcing company for reliable accounting services?
At 3Alpha LLC, we offer affordable data digitization services, account management services, and a wide range of other bookkeeping and outsourcing services to our clients to help them improve their business performance and streamline their everyday operations.
Our finance team is highly qualified and experienced and uses cutting-edge technology to provide highly advanced financial solutions to our clients and maintain transparency throughout our contract.
Contact us to learn more.