At Specialised Bicycle Parts, a worldwide high-performance bicycle and e-bike producer, the corporate should coordinate the accounting efforts of a number of regional hubs worldwide, together with the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) and South Africa.
As a part of this effort, finance groups from every hub should handle and reconcile the month-end shut, which may embrace many actions together with reviewing the corporate’s steadiness sheet, intercompany trades, journal entries and different paperwork (like financial institution statements, revenue and bills). Sadly, managing all of the actions that have to be carried out in every accounting subledger on the finish of the month to shut that interval could be a headache when the crew shouldn’t be aligned or organized.
This was the problem confronted by Valentina Guevara, former Head of Finance for the Latin American area for Specialised Bicycle Parts. Within the function, Guevara was accountable for the controllership of all Latin American markets and that concerned finishing the top of month shut as effectively as doable each month for the area.
For giant firms like Specialised Bicycle Parts, the info from all transactions throughout completely different classes on a enterprise’s chart of accounts are tracked within the firm’s subledgers, together with knowledge from accounts receivable, payable transactions, stock, fastened belongings and buy orders. All these day-to-day transactions are entered into the subledger, summarized and transferred to the final ledger.
After this, the steadiness sheet and revenue assertion may be run from the final ledger.The remainder of the data required to finish monetary reconciliation is commonly positioned in separate places, in a number of digital spreadsheets. There are additionally lists of actions that should be carried out on the finish of the month earlier than the data is entered into the final ledger, which has its personal set of actions to shut out the month.
Giant firms typically handle these duties with spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel and should chase accountable events to verify each merchandise is accomplished. As well as, recordsdata wanted to finish the method could also be saved on particular person customers’ desktops or on shared drives and coordination might happen over textual content chat and e mail. This makes it extremely tough to find all the info wanted to finish the closing course of, which ends up in added time, expense and inefficiency.
“We might use guide recordsdata to trace the closing duties. Nonetheless, we wish to keep away from losing time on administrative process and as a substitute full the duties as effectively as doable, closing is important,” mentioned Guevara. “To provide an instance, in the course of the closing interval you must placed on maintain all actions associated to gross sales till the closing course of is finalized. We can not problem invoices or enter new invoices from suppliers. So, we have to end the shut as shortly as doable.”
Fortuitously, Guevara was in a position to make the most of a software program device to expedite the month finish shut referred to as PowerClose from InfoMoksha. PowerClose is a software program utility in each cloud-based (together with Oracle Cloud) and on-premises fashions that’s designed to orchestrate and handle the start-to-end monetary and subledger shut processes throughout the enterprise. The software program automates and streamlines the work actions related to the shut cycle and provides a workflow-based platform to make sure shut cycle duties are correctly executed and reported.
PowerClose’s dashboards enable customers to watch all exercise in a single place, which eliminates the necessity for fixed monitoring of duties and makes it straightforward to see which duties have but to be accomplished and require a follow-up.
Finally, automating the method on this method saves company accounting groups money and time, significantly at audit time, by simplifying how shut cycle outcomes are accessed and preserving important features akin to launching the shut course of, monitoring progress and viewing stories multi function central portal.
“PowerClose lets you automate closing, from finish to finish,” mentioned Guevara.
Guevara additionally appreciates that the software program is totally built-in with the Specialised Bicycle Element’s ERP, which on this case is Oracle. When duties are accomplished throughout the ERP system, they’re robotically recorded in PowerClose and the info saved for later reference, actually helpful for audit inquiries.
“PowerClose and Oracle are related, so we don’t should waste time storing the duties output as soon as accomplished,” defined Guevara
The automated closing software program is versatile sufficient to adapt to altering company circumstances as effectively.
“Month by month you’ll be able to replace your closing listing if enterprise situations change, or a brand new process must be added. You may assign possession of particular person duties, so particular staff may be held accountable for process completion,” mentioned Guevara.
Guevara has since been promoted to Company International Finance Supervisor at Specialised Bicycle Parts’ headquarters. At present, she is engaged on a venture referred to as Lean Month Near determine and cut back wasted time within the company world course of utilizing PowerClose as an information supply of what’s at present been achieved by markets as a place to begin to outline the strategic plan .
“You may evaluation so many alternative metrics utilizing PowerClose. You probably have all of your areas related [by the software], you’ll be able to oversee all of the closing processes and total progress. This gives us with a worldwide overview of all of the duties associated to the company month-end shut so we are able to enhance the method as a lot as doable,” concludes Guevara.
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