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Employing finance reporting automation strategies is more than just a value move. In today’s business climate, it’s a necessity, one that can give your organization a competitive edge. 

So, we pooled our best resources and came up with the best five finance reporting automation strategies to help CFOs slash their financial reporting time in half.

The Top Five Strategies to Automate Financial Reporting

1. Standardize Financial Reporting

Let’s start at the top. A well-oiled financial machine can’t operate without clear processes in place. As Henry Ford famously said:

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.“

That’s why the most important strategy for finance reporting automation is to define and standardize reporting processes across your organization. 

For example, establishing clear deadlines for financial data delivery or defining guidelines for how reports should be formatted.

Having clear and well-defined standard procedures can also help your organization streamline and automate different parts of the process. 

To achieve this, you’ll first want to identify who are your key stakeholders in the different parts of the process. Once you determine who is involved, you’ll want to draft clear and detailed Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and train everyone involved in the process.

2. Integrate Financial Software

Integrating an online ERP system is by far the most effective way to automate your financial reporting and accounting. Accounting software can help your organization reduce spending, minimize errors, and forecast for the future by automating reporting.

Modern accounting software can automate finance reporting processes in ways CFOs and accounting professionals could only dream of before. 

These are some of the ways an online ERP system can help:

• Configure reports quickly with templates
• Automate report generation and delivery
• Automate data collection from various sources like sales and HR
• Access data in real-time
• Automatically consolidates statements

Surprisingly, a survey from KPMG revealed that over 50% of respondents were still using Word and Excel and not automated accounting software as part of their reporting process.

If your organization hasn’t taken advantage of all the benefits an ERP system can offer and you’re not sure where to start, our team can help. 

3. Create Report Templates

Another incredibly effective way your team can standardize and accelerate the reporting process is by creating report templates. By doing this, stakeholders can quickly complete the documentation needed without needing to reinvent the wheel.

At XLedger, we offer nearly 300 pre-defined standard reports, online inquiry screens, and the ability to build and configure reports within standardized templates.

4. Schedule Reporting

Leveraging financial software to automatically schedule and deliver financial reports is an excellent way to minimize mundane tasks for your team. 

With online ERP software, you can configure your system to automatically generate reports on specific dates or predetermined intervals. The reports can then be sent to recipients inside and outside your organization without any manual input.

5. Streamline Data Collection

Data collection and data entry are among the most time-consuming accounting processes. But with the advent of AI and automation algorithms, accounting professionals can now collect but also categorize, and seamlessly organize data.

Using accounting software that automates the data entry process and employing tools like Optical Character Recognition can significantly improve and speed up your accounting reporting.

How To Get Started

Finance reporting automation can save you and your team valuable time and resources. 

Free your finance team from tedious and repetitive finance reporting tasks by booking a free one-on-one demo with our team of experts.