Accelerating the Close
HOW AUTOMATION & AI ACCELERATES MONTH-END CLOSE
By Jo Fuller, Percipient
Month-end close automation helps finance teams reduce manual reconciliation, improve reporting accuracy, and shorten close cycles from weeks to days.
By using AI-powered financial management platforms like Sage Intacct, organisations can automate repetitive tasks, gain real-time visibility into performance, and move towards a continuous close model.
A Race Against the Clock
For many finance teams, month-end close can feel like a race against the clock. Chasing down reconciliations, validating and stitching together spreadsheets, and querying the unexpected, all converge to make what should be a straightforward process a painful one.
But for forward-thinking, high-performing organisations, the narrative has shifted. Research shows that finance teams lose nearly 44 hours every week for manual tasks, and that manual reporting carries an average of 4 errors per 100 entries.
By embracing automation, AI-driven workflows and dynamic dashboards, it’s not just month end efficiency which is improved, but the integrity and accuracy of the numbers, bringing faster reporting and reinforced confidence.
The Close Crisis
The traditional close process is retrospective by design.
Teams wait until a given period end before starting the process, which typically includes a time-consuming chain of events.
This convoluted set of processes, combined with disparate data sources creates bottlenecks and undertaken in a time pressured window, increases the risk of errors.
The net result is that month end becomes synonymous with gathering data.
The chain of events include:
- Stitching together spreadsheets
- Investigating variances
- Reconciling accounts
- Validating data
- Re-reconciling accounts
- Finalising accounts
Automation = Acceleration
Sage Intacct enables finance teams to embrace this shift, bringing structure, speed, integration and intelligence.
By automating reconciliations, standardising workflows, and providing real-time task tracking, Sage Intacct enables teams to move faster. AI-powered capabilities flag anomalies early, highlight variances as they happen, and ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
Instead of waiting until the end of the month to identify issues, finance teams can resolve them in real-time. This dramatically reduces the data gathering and manual reconciliation process, shortening the overall close cycle by days, weeks and in some cases, by as much as 90%.
Month-end is now completed on day two, compared with weeks previously. Not only does these free up resources to focus on higher-value tasks, but performance can be reviewed in a meaningful window.
Reducing Errors, Increasing Confidence
While a faster month end brings substantial efficiency benefits and frees up resources, it represents only part of the picture.
Automation doesn’t just speed things up, it improves accuracy, which in turn, boosts trust. Manual processes are prone to human error, particularly when high volumes of data sources are involved. Sage Intacct’s AI capabilities continuously monitor transactions to flags anomalies, and provide an audit-ready overview of accounts at pre-set intervals.
Because data is accurate, reliable and timely, there are minimal, if any, last minute adjustments needed, and trust in the numbers quickly breeds a culture of confidence. Finance leaders know that the numbers they’re reporting are robust, and because there is a single source of the truth, stakeholders from around the business can make faster decisions.
The Continuous Close
Based on these principles, the holy grail and goals for high performing finance teams is the continuous close.
Built around the concept that financial data is validated, reconciled, and analysed in real time, not just at pre-set periods such as month, it denotes a “live” reporting environment whereby key performance data can be accessed at any time.
Instead of a spike of activity at the end of the period, the workload is distributed evenly, reducing pressure and improving accuracy.
Sage AI brings this concept closer to reality, allowing teams intuitive and proactive monitoring of KPIs and insights to pinpoint performance against plans at any time.
Finance Freedom
Free from the burden of manual report stitching, finance teams’ time can be channelled into higher-value activities, underpinning innovation and strategy. Instead of compiling reports, they can interpret them. Instead of reconciling data, they can advise on strategy, and so on.
This shift, from data processor to strategic partner, is one of the most significant benefits of accelerating the close and strategic game changers of modern times.
A Dynamic Future
The landscape is evolving rapidly as demand and market dynamics become ever complex. Against this backdrop, firms simply can’t afford the luxury of using precious resources to re-key, re-reconcile and re-validate vital data, only to create a retrospective report.
Intelligent, dynamic platforms like Sage Intacct represent the foundations of this future. With real-time dashboards, on-demand reporting, and AI-driven insights, finance teams gain continuous visibility into performance and can respond instantly.
The organisations that thrive will be those that embrace this shift. Research ratifies this sentiment with 68% of CFOs (along with 70% of CEOs) believing that organisations that do not invest now in technology, infrastructure and skills will not survive the next five years.
Today’s decisions need to be based on live, reliable data. If they’re not, you can guarantee that your competitors will be exploiting this, capitalising on inaction to build market share at the expense of yours.
Ready to Accelerate Your Month-End Close?
Discover how Sage Intacct can help your finance team automate reconciliations, improve reporting accuracy and move towards a continuous close model.
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