The Financial Controller and CFO's Toolkit, 3rd Edition

Chapter 3Rapid Month-End Reporting: By Working Day Three or Less

OVERVIEW

Although many large organizations have made massive inroads into fast and accurate month-end reporting the vast majority of finance teams around the world have month-end processes that are career limiting, to say the least.

This chapter explores the processes you can abandon, those you need to bring forward, and when the cutoffs should occur. All these changes can occur before your next month-end. Many of these practices are common sense; however, common sense is not always evident.

Many large organizations have made massive inroads into fast and accurate month-end reporting. I say to them, “Celebrate your achievement,” but still read this chapter as you may be able to achieve a quicker month-end close. However, the vast majority of finance teams around the world have month-end processes that are career limiting. This chapter is an extract from my white paper, “Reporting rapidly, informatively and error free.”¹

When I was a corporate accountant, each month-end had a life of its own. You never knew when and where the next problem was going to come from. Two or three days away, we always appeared to have it under control, and yet each month we were faxing (email was not on the scene then) the result five minutes before the deadline. Our fingers were crossed as a series of late adjustments had meant that the quality assurance (QA) work we had done was invalid and we did not have the luxury of doing ...