One of the major goals of all accounting groups across every organization is to produce accurate consolidated financial statements at the end of every accounting period, which becomes difficult when trying to consolidate information from multiple data sources. This is where Cadency, our System of Controls, housed in our System of Accounting Intelligence comes into play. Our System of Controls for Consolidation provides proper checks and balances, necessary reviews and approvals, and the ability to make adjustments before finalizing consolidated statements at the end of the accounting period.

Another goal in the Office of Finance is strategic planning, which includes Forecasting, Budgeting and Analytics. Our System of Controls for Financial Planning and Forecasting can take forecasted/budgeted figures from a planning and forecasting tool and compare it against actuals from the System of Record (ERP, etc.) during the period-end close, which enables variance analysis between the planned and actual figures, and allows for any adjustments to be made.

After the necessary adjustments are made and accounts are reconciled as part of the period close, how does information from our System of Controls feedback into either a Consolidation or Planning and Forecasting System? This is where our System of Integration, specifically APIs, can help. An API stands for Application Programming Interface and it enables different applications to communicate with each other in a standardized format. Our new API, the GL Recs API, automatically sends reconciliation data from our System of Controls directly to a third-party system.

Why is this important?

This greatly reduces the manual effort of having to enter all consolidated or planning and forecasting information to their respective systems, which increases the efficiency and frees staff to focus on other high-risk areas of the period-end close. The automation of the sending of reconciliation data once the API is called ensures that accurate information is sent in a timely manner, reducing the risk of missing or incorrect information being entered.

Feature Capability

A REST (Representational State Transfer) based API, which allows for more flexible messaging between systems that sends GL data to third party systems configured in the endpoint. This can easily consolidate all reconciliation information from one place and from one data source – again reducing the risk of missing or inaccurate information.

What information is sent through the API?

GL Account, GL Balance, CCY Code, Period (MM-YYYY), Complete/Not Complete Status giving visibility into the accounts that have been reconciled and those outstanding reconciliations that still need to be completed.

For more information on how Cadency can increase your efficiency and effectiveness while reducing your cost and risk across your entire global R2R process, download our brochure.

Written by: Ryan Atkin