Monster Worldwide Implements AssureNET GL for General Ledger Reconciliation and Certification
Overview
Monster Worldwide is a $1.5 Billion company, operating in 26 countries around the world. Adding more than 15,000 new customers every quarter, they are a high growth company, growing at 30% to 35% year-over-year. They are best known for Monster.com, but also own hundreds of other URLs including government, non-profit, and niche markets dedicated to personal development. They have multiple financial offices around the world that report numbers to their New York headquarters, with approximately 80% of the volume coming from their Milwaukee and Prague financial offices. They reconcile approximately 2000 accounts on a monthly basis.
Challenges
As a multi-divisional company, Monster Worldwide found it nearly impossible to track compliance in regards to account reconciliation prior to selecting an automated solution. Their reconciliation process was completely manual and paper-based. The management of spreadsheets required large amounts of paper and binders to compile reconciliations for review and certification. In addition to being cumbersome, manually tracking the compliance of their account reconciliations was inefficient, lacked standardization, and provided no way to track metrics, or get to the heart of where issues or concerns actually resided.
While compliance is challenging for any high-growth company, Monster Worldwide discovered that their weakness fell in the area of account reconciliations. The company needed a standardized process that would ease the work of auditors and management, and allow the company to move accounts between accountants, all while maintaining compliance.
Objectives
Monster Worldwide had several key goals in selecting an account reconciliation tool, with their overall emphasis on compliance. Internally, they wanted an automated solution that would standardize the account reconciliation process. When reviewing applications, the company sought to recognize cost savings by replacing their manual processes with an electronic system that provided ease-of-use, visibility, and standardization to both US-based and international financial centers.
They selected AssureNET GL because the tool provides comprehensive reconciliation, certification, and reporting modules.
Monster Worldwide wanted to make it easier for auditors to access account reconciliations remotely - to be able to see what’s really going on - in less time - while trimming billable hours in the process. They wanted to be able to share account reconciliation responsibilities between employees, while maintaining their compliance policy with a sign-off and certification process that required personal accountability.
The company wanted a system that created workflow and auditing efficiencies, with online remote access allowing reconciled accounts to be reviewed and certified as completed, rather than in large groups, printed, and compiled in large binders. Remote access supports audit groups in by allowing the to electronically sort and review accounts as they are reconciled to ensure Sarbanes-Oxley requirements are met. This requires less travel and on-site firm representation, ultimately providing better quality reviews, while saving the company audit fees and billable hours.
Capabilities Provided
- Simplified management of the account reconciliation process
- Remote access to reconciliation resulting in increased visibility and standardization
- Desirable ease-of-use for internal accountants/auditors and external auditors
- Tool enables accountants and internal audit group to log into the system remotely and pull out key risk accounts or those flagged to monitor
- Tool enables external audit groups to electronically sort and review accounts to ensure Sarbanes-Oxley requirements are met
- People can focus on projects requiring a higher level of skill and analysis. Those with specializations can be redirected where they are most needed without allotting sophisticated resources to redundant manual processes
Testimonial
“We expect to realize time and cost savings with AssureNET GL. We recently went through realignment. Our controllers looked at the automation and were able to reduce staff by one. This combined with our expected savings in audit fees provides a payback that offsets the cost of implementing the tool.” - Dave Griebl, Vice President of Finance
Other Information
If you would like to learn how you too can standardize the account reconciliation process and improve SOX compliance, contact Trintech today.
