How to Automate Reconciliation to Create a Strong Financial Close Process Foundation

Blog post

Reconciliations – they’re crucial to your financial close process, but extremely tedious when done manually by members of your office of finance. They can take hours and even days to process, and that doesn’t even account (pun intended!) for any potential errors that can crop up and cost you even more time – or potential write-offs that cost you money.

We all know that accurate account reconciliation establishes an organization’s financial integrity. A timely, efficient and effective close should be the goal of every company’s office of finance, and account reconciliations are the foundation for the entire process. Additionally, SOX and other regulations have made the importance of absolute accuracy a priority for all businesses. When your organization is balancing hundreds, thousands or even millions of accounts, those goals and regulations become increasingly difficult to attain.

The solution to all of these challenges? Record to Report automation assisted by Risk Intelligent RPA™ (RI RPA). Trintech’s Cadency solution, with its RI RPA capabilities, help ensure that even your most complex reconciliations are no longer a source of frustration and adhere to industry best practices.

A reconciliation automation tool keeps your office of finance moving and on schedule by reducing the scope of accounts to be reconciled interactively through bulk reconciliation, completing the preparation requirements for many reconciliations, and alerting you to possible risk factors based on your specific tolerances. In fact, in a recent study on the potential ROI of using Cadency, Trintech’s customers reported up to a 90% reduction in the number of reconciling accounts, a 90% reduction in time needed to prepare reconciliations for review, and a 75% reduction in time required by senior managers to review and monitor completeness.

Cadency also helps your employees turn their attention away from baffling balance sheets to more value-driven work like analysis and reporting. These higher-value tasks give your talented team members a break from mind-numbing spreadsheets by shifting their focus to the much more fulfilling and rewarding tasks associated with making strategic contributions to your business.

And, with Cadency’s Compliance process, you can rest assured that you are complying with all applicable internal and external regulations. Regulations are constantly changing and difficult to keep up with. Mistakes are inevitable and can cost your company thousands or even millions in restatement costs, $2.5 million on average according to a Compliance Week audit analytics report, or auditing fees.

Learn more about how ConAgra Foods achieved best-practice industry standards by implementing Cadency Certification for reconciliation in today’s compliance-focused world.

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As you know, reconciliations are just the first part in your financial close process. Learn more about how complete automation of your Record to Report process can strengthen the integrity of your entire financial close process.

Written by: Sam King