Brought to you by
lucanet logo

Market leader in Financial Performance Management software - developed by finance professionals for finance professionals.

Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Financial statements: How to prepare them quickly and securely

14th Sep 2021
Brought to you by
lucanet logo

Market leader in Financial Performance Management software - developed by finance professionals for finance professionals.

Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Optimised financial consolidation graph 10days vs 1,5 days

Let’s be honest, how many hours do you spend on your quarterly, annual or consolidated financial statements? Let’s guess: Way too many!

Even creating regular reports takes a lot of time. What’s more, there is a growing amount of regulations for reporting and external stakeholders consistently seek more and more information at an ever-increasing pace. Financial reporting is becoming more complex along with an increasing level of time pressure, which can lead to focusing on collecting and validating financial data while leaving little time to analyse it. Not to mention the chance to formulate strategies for growth. Am I right?

Effective financial consolidation: Facts and checklist

The good news: There is a solution. With the right FPM solution, you can significantly reduce the time needed to prepare your financial statements. In just a few mouse clicks, the software gives you consistent and reliable figures, thus reducing the time required for financial consolidation, planning, and reporting. The benefit is obvious: you finally have more time to analyse and draw up strategies.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the challenges posed by financial statements. And we will give you some practical tools including a checklist, which quickly shows you and your financial teams whether your company could benefit from professional software as well as which software can solve your individual problems regarding consolidated financial statements.

Challenges in preparing financial statements

Working with our clients, we have encountered a number of major challenges in preparing consolidated financial statements. Additionally, we identified what prevents companies from consolidating faster. We have summarised the most significant challenges for you:

Challenge 1: Time-consuming manual processes

Especially when working with traditional systems such as Excel, manual data entry can take hours to complete: It is nearly impossible to ensure automated processes and the consolidation workflow over any number of levels of corporate structures at the touch of a button.

Challenge 2: Inaccurate financial data

Manually entering and maintaining financial data guarantees errors will be made, with a wide range of effects from unintentionally deleting items to outdated and inaccurate data as well as incorrect links and formulas.

Challenge 3: Format changes due to a patchwork of systems

When working with stand-alone solutions, changes in format can occur, often resulting in inconsistent data and coordination issues.

Challenge 4: Unsatisfactory collaboration

A lack of system support can quickly lead to misunderstandings about deadlines, responsibilities, and data delivery. Countless rounds of clarification can prolong the consolidation process.

And if individual and consolidated financial statements are not interlinked, the process often becomes even more prone to errors, more complex, and inefficient.

The right solution for efficiently preparing financial statements

Many companies know that they won’t get very far with Excel spreadsheets for complex financial statements and should rely on consolidation solution instead. However, many financial teams find it difficult to implement a professional software solution for their company’s financial statements, because:

  • The specialist departments use different systems that are not compatible with each other.
  • The software used is outdated.

The result? Only at the very last minute, when the system begins to jeopardize their company’s proper business activities, does the team take action.

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Find out which software provider can meet your needs for your quarterly, annual and consolidated financial statements.

We have already advised a number of companies and helped them to navigate out of very complicated situations. But a word to the wise: Don’t wait until it may be too late.

E-book with a checklist, case study, and benefits of a consolidation solution

Companies that tackle their individual problems at an early stage when preparing financial statements will soon be on the fast track to success. We would be happy to assist you in achieving this.

Download our free e-book “Faster Closer” and remove the stress of consolidated financial statements in your company once and for all.

Our e-book includes:

  1. A detailed description of the challenges posed by consolidation
  2. Three key factors that can show you how to prepare your financial statements faster
  3. A checklist that helps you decide when you may benefit from a solution
  4. The advantages of a professional consolidation solution 
  5. LucaNet case study from our customer Thai Union
  6. An overview of what makes LucaNet the leading consolidation solution

Make the time-consuming and frustrating process of compiling financial statements a thing of yesterday and download our e-book right away:

Download 'Faster Close' e-book