Streamlined financial reporting is very important for midsized businesses, helping to save both time and money. Streamlined reporting is essential for financial statements, annual reports, safety incident reporting, sales management reports, press releases, and a number of other reports. Ideal financial reporting should have the following characteristics: visibility, transparency, accountability, and ease of use. Visibility should show where all employees are in the process of reporting. Reports should be made transparent by linking all data back to its original source, which helps to reduce errors. Report owners should hold accountability for the reports and increase collaboration between contributors. Finally, reports should be easy and fast to complete.

Unfortunately, many businesses today are working with outdated systems. Approximately 82% of businesses still use spreadsheets as their primary tool for reporting.[1] This outdated method takes up a lot of time. 90% of companies, in fact, believe that they spend too much time assembling reports.[2] Many managers also feel like they have minimal control over the reporting process, and errors are likely to make their way into the data and final report. Overall, manual reporting takes up unnecessary work hours, costs a lot, and increases the risk of errors.

The best midsized businesses have realized that automated reports are essential to save time and money and increase accuracy. Automated systems allow for accurate cross-functional financial reporting to be completed efficiently. These reports can be completed much more quickly (on average 7 days faster) than manual reports.[3] Automated reports can be shared easily, facilitating collaboration. They can also be linked to past and future reports, creating a trail that can easily be followed to check accuracy. This allows managers to keep reports consistent and accurate over time. It also provides employees with more time to complete valuable work. Automating reporting also provides flexibility, as it can be done through a cloud system or on the business premises. In conclusion, automated financial reporting enables reporting that is much more efficient, easy to use, and accurate, enabling a business to produce far superior reports while saving company resources.

NewIntelligence can help you select and implement the right financial reporting solution, priced for mid-market companies, that does all of this, and provides your organization with a fast ROI.  Contact us today to find out more.

[1] Study by the Hackett Group

[2]July 2012 Linking Numbers and Narratives: Correlating Quantitative Reports with Qualitative Analysis

[3] Study by the Hackett Group