The Office of Finance within enterprise organizations must manage large data sets within their general ledger and sub-ledgers. When this is done manually it is a significant challenge to complete the transaction matching and reconciliation processes efficiently… To overcome this and ensure accuracy, finance teams must place a high priority on modernizing legacy processes. Any financial process that relies on manually maintained spreadsheets and institutionalized knowledge negatively impacts an organization’s ability to produce accurate, insightful financial reports. Additionally, to achieve goals such as reduced close costs, and improved controls and compliance policies, organizations must look at implementing a proven technology solution that streamlines the entire close process – starting with transaction matching and reconciliations.

As finance teams continue to face growing responsibility within their organizations and feel the added pressure to play a more strategic role, it is imperative that they pursue digital transformation agendas more quickly in order to standardize and optimize their processes.

 “The complexity of large enterprises (e.g., global operations, multiple divisions, and multiple ERP vendors, instances, and versions) creates challenges for getting a clear financial health picture. Dedicated finance teams often struggle with the level of manual effort required to maintain the accuracy and visibility of financial data across the organization.” – Forrester – Leveraging Advanced Technology to Succeed in a Complex Financial Environment

Improving Transaction Matching and Reconciliation Processes

The reconciliation process sets the foundation for the remainder of the financial close. When managed manually, finance professionals spend a significant amount of time on tedious, repetitive tasks related to compiling data for matching and reviewing reconciliations. Often this results in rushing to complete necessary tasks, due to the sheer volume of work to be done, which leads to human error and unstandardized processes across various business units.

In order to reduce overall risk and focus employees’ attention on high-value strategic activities, leading organizations are turning to financial close solutions with automation capabilities built-in to establish and enforce standardized processes across the enterprise and eliminate error-prone, time-consuming manual tasks.

 

 “The prevalence of manual process has hampered the ability of finance to be agile. Standardization/automation of processes is key to becoming more scalable and efficient.”- Forrester – Leveraging Advanced Technology to Succeed in a Complex Financial Environment

Selecting the Right Financial Close Solution

An effective financial close solution will leverage automation and integrations which enable accurate transaction matching across multiple sources and easily handle high-volume – both of which are critical to improving efficiency and accuracy without compromising key controls.

A recent study from Forrester actually urges that “bold investments are necessary because effective financial close solutions require the ability to integrate across multiple ERPs and comprehensively address the Record to Report process with automation.”

Supporting Global Alignment

The Office of Finance within global organizations must manage multiple books across multiple geographies which encompass various accounting and tax laws. Handling this multi-currency data can easily increase risk if processes are not standardized across business units. It is critical that any technology solution utilized by finance be able to support global currencies, as well as easily enforce standardized processes across the organization to prevent reporting inaccuracies.

Cadency’s System of Controls

Cadency® by Trintech is a proven financial close automation solution that helps organizations overcome these common challenges within the transaction matching and reconciliation processes. Cadency’s System of Controls enables global enterprises to drive a standardized, organization-wide close with improved accuracy and efficiency. The results speak for themselves. Users of Cadency have reported up to an 80% reduction in time spent matching transactions and a 99% reduction in preparation time for reconciliations.

With Cadency Reconciliation Match, the Office of Finance can perform high-volume transaction matching and rapidly enhance the accuracy and regulatory compliance of all resulting financial statements.

Benefits of Cadency Reconciliation Match

1. Increase operational efficiencies
2. Improve visibility and data insights
3. Reduce costs and mitigate risk
4. Reduce potential employee fraud and cash shortages

“70% of high-volume transactions are matched automatically, freeing up time for the research and resolution of exceptions. “ -Western and Southern Financial Group

Discover how the high-volume matching capabilities of Cadency Reconciliation Match can eliminate disjointed, error-prone processes in your Office of Finance.

Written by: Karagan McConkey