The end of the month causes unreasonable stress. Duplicate data entry, frustrating number adjustment, and learning that information is just plain wrong creates friction between departments and demands long, thankless hours.
There's a better way. A cloud ERP solution like Acumatica can automate many of the most labor-intensive tasks your accountants face each month—freeing them up to better serve the needs of your executives.
- Here are the top 7 symptoms of a bad month-end close process:
1. Manual Work and Duplicate Data Entry
Disconnected systems between departments force accountants to re-enter data manually after exhaustive research. With disparate spreadsheets kept by individual employees, no single person keeps truly accurate inventory until the end of the month.
Acumatica ERP software automatically integrates with every extant system and moves data from one to another to keep all information updated across the board at all times. Save hours of manual labor, sore wrists, and tired eyes by entering information once into a shared source that anyone can access.
2. Delayed Financial Reporting
In traditional reporting, managers lack financial information until the end of the month. This lack forces them to make important decisions about future direction without adequate time to consider. Worse, employees tracking their own records wind up frustrated when their numbers don't match the official, final records.
No one knows where the company is or how it’s doing, except for a few days at the end of the month.
Real-time financial results ensure everyone stays on the same page. Leaders can track reports daily rather than monthly, with role-based security to get the right information to the right people.
Stop scrambling to fact-check your numbers when justifying every decision you base on them. With the same data, teams can decide on a future direction together.
3. Incomplete or Incorrect Transaction Entries
At the end of the month, accounts must reconcile. Paper document flow makes it easy for errors to be recorded and spread. Every incorrect data point must be tracked back to its source, and if the document has been destroyed, accountants need to dive into disparate spreadsheets to get the information they need.
Employees hate writing reports just as much as accountants hate reading them. Instead of reporting invoices and risking overlooking important documents, machine learning makes it easy to update transactions in real-time.
Acumatica identifies and scans vendor bills, deposits, and receipts and moves digital source documents through the payment process with the actual transaction to reduce the number of revisions. Our software routes vital information to the right place as soon as it arrives, cutting delays down to nothing.
4. Manual Adjustments, Accruals, and Allocations
Anytime a manual adjustment is needed, accountants must track both the data itself and its source to confirm correct routing.
Acumatica makes this easy. Deferral codes allow the system to inherently recognize expenses and revenue, calculate their impact and compare them to existing data, and include them in overall revenue, cutting manual amount adjustments out of the equation.
5. Lack of Standardized Process
Business needs change quickly as new clients come and go, and every client requires subtle policy shifts. This instability makes it nearly impossible to create a standard system, so each employee uses a unique and outdated policy, unaware that the time for change has long since passed.
Acumatica’s single unified dashboard can be configured at one point and updated for all employees, maintaining unity and streamlining the implementation process for each change.
6. Manual Reconciliations
At the end of the month, accountants must consider every balance and transfer, including unrecorded transactions. This requirement creates terrifying swings in cash flow and drives emotional decision-making before the final numbers arrive.
Automated systems reconcile invoices and payments daily with transaction reports that apply immediately and automatically calculate actual cash amounts. Employees can transform a devastating month-end undertaking into an easy daily task.
7. Limited Managerial Insights
Disparate accounts ensure management can't gather the insights necessary to make informed decisions until the month ends, which gives little time to make decisions — and those numbers can be rushed, compromised, and inaccurate.
A unified database generates customized financial statements in real-time. Acumatica doesn’t cut corners, either. No one-size-fits-all approach here. Instead, individual users configure their reports to highlight the information they need.
Get the eBook to Learn More: Modernize Your Financial Close
Read our full eBook, Take the Pain Out of Month-End: Modernize Your Financial Close, to discover:
- The top 7 symptoms of a bad month-end close process.
- How real-time results can keep everyone on the same page.
- Why automated adjustments may be the key to your efficiency.
- How to automate low-value, high-tedium tasks with cloud ERP.
- What it takes to “close as you go” on a continuous basis.
With cloud ERP, you can improve morale, enhance communication, and increase collaboration among your accounting team. Read this eBook to get started.
Make Your Month-End Close Easy With Cloud 9 ERP Solutions and Acumatica
The end of the month should be a day just like any other. Work marches on, and there's no reward for the crunch as the month rolls over — only more work.
Automated solutions let employees return to more productive and enjoyable tasks, which ensures they do their best work instead of the work they have to do.
Let Cloud 9 ERP Solutions, a Gold Certified Acumatica Partner, help make stressful month-ends a thing of the past with Acumatica Financial Management. Contact us today to get started!
