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Cloud CFO consolidation pain
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Cloud CFO tool takes away consolidation pain

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23rd Jun 2016
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A new tool claims to take the pain out of group consolidation and shave days off each month’s financial close using flexible spreadsheets linked to the cloud.

According to figures from software developer Synapse 20% of groups in the UK still use spreadsheets to consolidate their accounts, and many of them continue to experience problems around the speed of the process, duplication of work and user access.   

Regular consolidation queries on this site’s Any Answers forum are usually along the lines of “Excel is not doing the job any more, does anyone have any recommendations?”

At the ICAEW financial controller conference on 22 June AccountingWEB met Synapse, whose Cloud CFO product could provide an answer to the many questions posed on the site about group consolidation over the years.

In the past tools like Falcon, AccountsIQ, Microsoft FRx, ARKK and CaseWare have all been suggested, but while software companies have attempted to ween users off Excel, Synapse has taken the “if you can’t beat them join them” approach.

With the Cloud CFO tool, users continue to input figures on their spreadsheets, with the keystrokes recorded in the program’s cloud database. The consolidation, audit and integrity work is then done in the background, tailored to fit around how the group manages its business.

This approach eliminates the need for training as users can continue to use spreadsheets and local accounting packages. It also supports multi-user access and the “one version of the truth” ideal that finance managers and software vendors seek.

Synapse claimed that cutting out the legwork associated with Excel-based consolidation will potentially shave two or three days off the monthly close process and allow more time to interrogate the data.

The Birmingham-based software company was founded in 2012, and according to Silicon Valley veteran and Synapse founder Brian Donnelly the idea for Cloud CFO came from a chance discussion with the CIO of a leading British bank.

The bank had a PPI misselling problem and one spreadsheet to track it, with potentially thousands of people entering data to the sheet. Donnelly was asked, “Can you fix it?” After almost a year of development work, Cloud CFO was able to give senior managers the information they needed.

In the second half of the year Synapse will be working with Companies House to automate statutory accounts production, so users can go from a set of consolidated internal numbers to full statutory accounts. The offering should be ready by the end of quarter three this year.

The company’s website does not feature pricing details. When cornered at Tuesday’s ICAEW event a representative from Synapse told AccountingWEB that user packages are negotiated on a client-by-client basis.

Have you experienced Excel consolidation issues? What processes or tools do you use to solve them?

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