Finance teams take on average 7 working days to close the books each month, according to a report by Sage.
You probably know the feeling; you’ve only just finished closing the books for one month and it already feels like the next month end is creeping up to you!
With Sage Intacct, month end doesn’t have to be a chore.
In this article, we’ll cover the different ways the automation, AI and organisation tools in Sage Intacct help you speed up your month end close.
Automate repetitive tasks
Repetitive tasks like reviewing transactions, reconciling accounts and subledgers and consolidating entities take up the most time at month end. Sage Intacct has many automation features that replace manual processes, including:
- Variance Analysis: Uses AI to detect budget vs actual variances early
- Bank Reconciliation: Automatically reconciles bank accounts
- GL Outlier Detection: Uses AI to continuously detect and flag outliers
- Global and Domestic Consolidation: Consolidates hundreds of entities
- Subledger Reconciliation Assistant: Auto-generates reconciliation reports and highlights discrepancies between subledgers and the General Ledger
By utilising AI and technology to automate repetitive tasks, you can save time and reduce mistakes, (along with time-consuming corrections) not just at month end, but day-to-day too.
Standardise your close process
Without a set process, your monthly close can feel disorganised and chaotic. In some cases, this can lead to delays, mistakes or forgotten tasks.
By creating a standard process for the whole team to follow each month, you’ll speed up the monthly close, improve accuracy and ensure nothing gets missed.
Sage Intacct’s Close Workspace allows you to:
- Create a close checklist with all the tasks that need to be completed
- Create task templates with all the relevant information and steps
- Set deadlines so the team knows what they need to do and when
- (More on the capabilities of Close Workspace coming right up!)
Once you have established your close process, you can continually review and improve it to make your close as efficient as possible.
Track your progress in real-time
Having different staff members working on different tasks can make it difficult to see how the close is progressing. Being able to track progress helps with identifying bottlenecks, communicating deadlines and allocating resources to the right tasks.
Close Workspace includes all the below, in one handy place:
- Shared checklists to keep your team in sync
- Dashboard with a full overview of tasks, assignees and more
- Task allocation and due date notifications
- In-task collaboration to reduce delays
- Visual charts for tracking progress
Sage’s Close Assistant also shows you which subledgers are closed, and which tasks are outstanding, all in one place. From there, all it takes is a single click to jump straight into the relevant area of the system where tasks need to be completed.
Simplify reporting & financial statements
Inaccurate or missing data, manually building reports in spreadsheets and combining data from different systems are just a few of the challenges affecting month end reporting.
The reporting tools in Sage Intacct help you to simplify the process of generating your reports and financial statements:
- Wealth of reporting tools and pre-built reports
- Reports for compliance with a variety of tax jurisdictions
- Automatically consolidate hundreds of entities in minutes
- Schedule reports to automatically generate & send to the relevant people
- Open API enables easy integration with different systems
Having the reports and statements you need sooner means you can spend more time looking at what the data is telling you and planning how to improve next month.
Explore Sage Intacct in more detail
Together, the features in Sage Intacct make month end faster, easier and more enjoyable by automating tasks and improving visibility, collaboration and accuracy.
Whether you’re an existing user looking to take more advantage of the monthly close features or you’re new to Sage Intacct altogether, we’re here to help. Complete the enquiry form on this page and we’ll get in touch to discuss your needs.
