MENUMENU
  • FREE RESOURCES
        • Accounts Payable
          Finally! The trick to securing greater T&E compliance
          Benefits
          Rooting out folks who don’t belong on your health plan: A 6-point dependent audit checklist
          IT
          3 costly misconceptions about biz email compromise
          Credit and Collections
          Collecting via email: 4 must-make moves in your subject line
          Accounts Payable
          5 Tough-to-spot signs that an invoice is fake
  • PREMIUM CONTENT
        • Staff management
          120 Proven Communications Tips for Today’s CFO
        • Payroll
          Handling Nonexempt Employee Pay: Stay Compliant and Avoid DOL Audits
          Accounts Payable
          T&E Best Practices: Complete Guide to Ensure Compliance
          Payroll
          Payroll Best Practices: 4 Ways to Save Time and Money
        • Staff management
          Email Best Practices: A 6-Question Quiz
          Staff management
          Innovative Communications Strategies: An Email Case Study
          Staff management
          A 5-part Framework for Successful Workplace Communications
        • SEE MORE
          PREMIUM RESOURCES
  • CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES
  • LOGIN
  • SIGN UP FREE

CFO Daily News

MENUMENU
  • FREE RESOURCES
        • Accounts Payable
          Finally! The trick to securing greater T&E compliance
          Benefits
          Rooting out folks who don’t belong on your health plan: A 6-point dependent audit checklist
          IT
          3 costly misconceptions about biz email compromise
          Credit and Collections
          Collecting via email: 4 must-make moves in your subject line
          Accounts Payable
          5 Tough-to-spot signs that an invoice is fake
  • PREMIUM CONTENT
        • Staff management
          120 Proven Communications Tips for Today’s CFO
        • Payroll
          Handling Nonexempt Employee Pay: Stay Compliant and Avoid DOL Audits
          Accounts Payable
          T&E Best Practices: Complete Guide to Ensure Compliance
          Payroll
          Payroll Best Practices: 4 Ways to Save Time and Money
        • Staff management
          Email Best Practices: A 6-Question Quiz
          Staff management
          Innovative Communications Strategies: An Email Case Study
          Staff management
          A 5-part Framework for Successful Workplace Communications
        • SEE MORE
          PREMIUM RESOURCES
  • CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES
  • Accounts Payable
  • Credit and Collections
  • Payroll
  • Accounting
  • Benefits
  • Finance Technology
  • More
    • Employment Law
    • Strategy
    • Policy and Culture
    • Fraud
    • Payments and Transactions
    • Budgeting and Forecasting
    • Banking
    • Staff Management
    • Cost Control
    • Supply Chain
    • IT

It's never too early to handle year-end

Shane Borer
by Shane Borer
April 30, 2008
  • Accounting
2 minute read
  • SHARE ON

There’s one positive to closing the company’s books: Finance won’t have to worry about the task for another year. But starting the process early — as in, right now …

Will shave weeks off the year-end cycle.

Sure, you can just bump up the year-end process by a week or two. The earlier you start the financial reporting and closing, the earlier it’ll be over with, right? But here’s some food for thought: The average company takes nearly six days to close its month-end books, with another five spent on reporting.

Then the real time crunch at year-end happens. Once Finance gathers info from other departments and compiles it, a company only has a few weeks (if it’s lucky) to correct any issues.

What’s the major issue for closing? Of course, it’s tempting to blurt out the S-word: spreadsheets. Excel’s a reliable reporting tool, but it’s hard for Finance to control what goes into a report, especially for employees who aren’t used to dealing with numbers on a day-to-day basis.

But business performance management (BPM) systems aren’t a cure-all for lengthy closes, either. Automated programs can help manage spreadsheet overload and speed up the reporting cycle, but they aren’t helpful if the data being compiled isn’t reliable.

Instead of waiting until year-end to pick up on mistakes, switching to a monthly system will give Finance and other departments a chance to hone their closing skills. Keep data accurate and on track by ensuring staffers, at minimum:

  • Perform a monthly soft close and a quarterly hard close to keep an eye on how numbers are shaping up
  • Reconcile transactions as soon as possible (it makes finding and fixing errors run smoother), and
  • Report to every department how their data quality stacks up.

Not only does running a mini-close every month keep incoming data as accurate as possible, but it’ll ease crunch-time on finance and accounting departments when it’s time for the real deal.

Keep Up To Date with the Latest Finance News

With CFO Daily News arriving in your inbox, you will never miss critical stories on accounting, benefits, payroll & employment law strategies.

Sign up for a free CFO Daily News membership and get our newsletter!
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
CFO Daily News Logo
  • ABOUT CFO DAILY NEWS
  • ADVERTISE WITH US
  • WRITE FOR US
  • CONTACT
  • Accounting
  • Benefits
  • Payroll
  • Policy and Culture
  • Employment Law
  • Fraud
  • Finance Technology
  • Accounts Payable
  • Credit and Collections
  • Strategy
  • Payments and Transactions
  • Budgeting and Forecasting
  • Banking
  • Staff Management
  • Cost Control
  • Supply Chain
  • IT

CFO Daily News, part of the SuccessFuel Network, provides the latest Finance and employment law news for Finance professionals in the trenches of small-to-medium-sized businesses. Rather than simply regurgitating the day’s headlines, CFO Daily News delivers actionable insights, helping Finance execs understand what Finance trends mean to their business.

Privacy Policy Terms of Service
Copyright © 2021 SuccessFuel

WELCOME BACK!

Enter your username and password below to log in

Forget Your Username or Password?

Reset Password

Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.

Log In

preloader