How many meetings do you sit in during your reporting cycle just to understand when you are ready to file?  Be honest.  No matter your answer, I bet for most people it feels like way too many.  And then at the end, how confident are you that the numbers are accurate?  A recent survey taken by Ernst & Young found that half of the 1,000 CFOs surveyed were not even “somewhat confident” in their degree of financial reporting.  By integrating Cadency’s System of Controls with Workiva, customers will be able to reduce the time spent and reduce the risk of misstatement during reporting season.

Disparate Teams

For most large publicly traded companies, the effort to complete the financial close and complete the financial statements are completed by different teams.  You might have your corporate accounting team working through the month-end close activities, account reconciliations, allocations, intercompany, etc. and your finance team compiling the income statement, statement of cash flows, and various other disclosures.  Any accountant would understand how the two activities are interrelated, but how do both teams get visibility to know when one action is in a state complete enough to start the next?  Through the strategic partnership between Trintech and Workiva, companies now will be able to seamlessly link and transfer data between platforms to drive efficiencies and improve accuracy throughout the entire close and reporting processes.

Cadency and Workiva Integration

Let’s talk more about where integration could be beneficial and how that is solved for with this partnership.  Cadency’s System of Controls and System of Accounting Intelligence are well known for streamlining and providing visibility to the financial close.  Cadency has long been a leader in the Record to Report space, and by integrating Cadency with Workiva, it provides a blueprint to map out all tasks required from close to disclose.  The last thing any company wants is to have process breakdowns manifest in account reconciliations or further down the line in financial reporting.  It is important to identify bottlenecks throughout the entire Record to Report process if your company wants to increase your efficiency and effectiveness while reducing overall cost and risk.  This is true now while the world is still grappling with COVID-19, as it ever has been.  Learning how to strengthen your regulatory reporting now and in the future has become a requirement for most companies.

Watch the following demonstration video to illustrate the integration between Cadency and Workiva:

While the actual tasks needed to ensure a smooth Record to Report process will differ for each company, what we do know are some major financial close processes which would be best to integrate with reporting activities.  Let’s start with balance sheet reconciliations.  As part of a global System of Controls, reconciliations ensure the integrity of your financial close.  The final answer of any reconciliation process should be confidence the financials are free of material misstatement and that you are ready to report.  During the reconciliation process, preparers and reviewers are ensuring the quality of internal controls over transactions, providing regulatory oversight, and performing fraud analysis all while identifying reconciling items and impact to the P&L.  Once that reconciliation has been reviewed and approved, the finance team can be assured that the number has stopped moving.  They now have confidence in the numbers, and it is time to start that disclosure or financial statement.

But what happens if something changes?  The last thing you want to do is complete a reporting section, only to learn that a journal entry was booked late.  Cadency already has integration which can automatically complete an action plan when a reconciliation is reviewed and approved.  That integration can also automatically reopen an action plan if the reconciliation is reopened due to a balance change in the ERP, causing the preparer to recertify the reconciliation.  By integrating Cadency to Workiva, customers can now have a real-time proactive notification in Workiva of activities occurring in Cadency.  The visibility issues we talked about earlier are a thing of the past.  Confidence is restored in the validity of the numbers used for financial statements.

It isn’t just a one-way street of information from Cadency to Workiva that is important.  Once financial disclosure activities are completed in Workiva by the finance team, members of corporate accounting have additional steps.  Whether it is officially closing the period or starting to prepare a PBC list for an upcoming audit, controllers and senior managers need to have insight to the completion of the financial statements.  We talked earlier about how to properly prepare for regulatory or statutory reporting by building a blueprint of activities that would need to be performed.  The integration from Workiva to Cadency ensures completeness and visibility for all teams.  When a footnote is completed or the results of operations management discussion is completed in Workiva, the corresponding Cadency Close task will automatically be updated.  This integration is unique to Trintech and Workiva and will position your company to effectively manage all reporting requirements to meet the ever-changing regulatory environment across the globe.

Conclusion

Many organizations are challenged not only with new regulations, but the lack of accuracy to underlying financials and visibility to the completeness of the Record to Report process.  Through the integration of Cadency and Workiva, companies can adapt to regulatory changes by integrating their financial close and reporting process.  Cadency’s System of Controls can help identify the bottlenecks in the Record to Report process, and after integration with Workiva turn regulatory changes into Record to Report transformation.