Simplify the Financial Reporting Process to Improve Visibility and Allocation of Resources

July 3, 2019 4:17 pm | by John Adams

The financial reporting process to keep internal decision makers and external stakeholders informed is becoming more and more complex every year. Businesses have data coming in from multiple departments and systems, often leaving the financial reporting teams with only half the picture.

Investing in processes through systems and tools can significantly improve their accuracy, process time and results. Automation and software integration benefits the entire business by collating the company data in a single data file, allowing visibility from administration, operations, payroll/HR to finance. Visibility is critical for making informed decisions and allocating finances for resources and project management. Inefficiencies in key financial processes can disrupt operations and cause significant setbacks to your business.

How to simplify your business processes for financial visibility

Create process maps. This helps to understand how they work and identifies timing and schedules, roles of individuals and teams, functions and organisations, systems and tools, business units, locations etc.

Once you’ve settled on process maps and highlighted systems to improve, build a management team. This should comprise of a cross-section of dedicated stakeholders who are influential for buy-ins across other departments.

Examine how to automate your workflows from start to finish to increase efficiency. Once the processes are automated, visibility is increased by having access to real-time data. This helps monitor and analyse performance by identifying inefficiencies and fixing them as they occur. Secure your data by role-based access and look at standardising the recurring and identical processes to simplify replication.

Identify risks that may result from a breakdown in a process. Investigate how these can be eliminated from multiple data sources, manual steps and any additional steps in a process. Identify opportunities to reduce complexity and increase efficiency through automation, visibility and collaboration.

Lastly define business rules for decision making. These should be simple and direct so they bypass workflows without delays.

Organise data for a seamless financial reporting process

Collect and normalise your data by creating flexible templates that enable contributors to submit structured and unstructured data in a consistent fashion. Outline a collection process that facilitates the standardisation of data from all departments. Once the data has been collected, organise the information by developing reporting guidelines, permissions on who can view and edit specific documents, pages, or spreadsheet cells to help preserve data integrity.

Organise a single source of truth, store your data in one place. This establishes links and an audit trail between source data and all related destinations so any changes are visible and can go through all departments. This ensures, if an error is detected, one person can correct it swiftly and in one place only. Everyone will have the same view and are checking the same data for quality and inconsistencies.

Store all final reports in a single location. This will simplify the process of searching for the most current data to compile for customised or standard reports, dashboards, workbooks and presentations.

For more information on the benefits for financial management of an ERP System in simplifying the reporting process – SapphireOne ERP, CRM, DMS and Business Accounting Software Application Alternatively, contact our office on (02) 8362 4500 or request a demo.

Important New Workflow Security Code

January 17, 2019 9:39 am | by John Adams

New workflow security code. There have been security breaches within our competitor’s software of vendor files being hacked relating to their BSB and Account numbers. An external party has been changing these details and clients who thought they were paying vendors have been unwittingly paying into someone else’s bank account.

To ensure this doesn’t happen to our SapphireOne clients we have coded a Workflow Security Code on Vendor bank account changes.

This needs to be installed by the nominated person with access to Bank Details.

To create a Workflow in SapphireOne go to:

Utilities Mode
Top tool bar select Controls- Workflow Rules
Click the blue + sign in the left corner of the tool bar
Insert Title ie Vendor Bank Changes
Go to Transaction- select Vendor
Underneath for Rules Trigger- select Bank Details
Go to Type – insert User Name
On the right click the Authorisation Required box and the Email Notification box below if you would like to receive one (ensure your email account is set up in SapphireOne)
Then confirm by clicking on the green tick in the top tool bar which will take you to the Workflow Rules Inquiry screen
Ensure your rule has been recorded then close the screen by clicking on the red cross in the tool bar

For the Notification Alert:

In the top right corner of SapphireOne the Blue round icon will display a notification
Click on the bank changes notification to be directed to the Workflow Centre
Highlight the change you would like to approve
Then click on the top right button called Open In Inquiry
You will be directed to the History of Bank Changes screen
Double click to open the transaction you would like to review, then check the details are correct
Close down the screens till you are back at the Workflow Centre
Highlight the change again and click the approve or reject button down the bottom

Every time there is a change to bank account details it needs to be approved by the nominated person.

SapphireOne also strongly recommends you verbally confirm changes in bank account details with your vendors, and ensure you talk to the appropriate contact.

For extra security, a record is kept of the changes. Go to Utilities Mode, select in top tool bar History, then History of Bank Changes.

For more information regarding improvements and features within the latest release of SapphireOne ERP Business Accounting Application please contact our office on (02) 8362 4500 or request a demo.