Financial Close and Consolidation Software

The financial close marks the end of the accounting period when accountants close the books in order to prepare financial documents for reporting purposes. At this time, the finance team ensures all transactions have been accounted for and posted. Financials are then collected so that the gross and net balances are captured within financial records. And so begins the financial consolidation process.

Consolidated financials are the statements where all assets, liabilities, income, expenses, cash flows and equity of a company and its subsidiaries are combined. They’re composed of the consolidated income statement, balance sheet and note disclosures and are meant to gauge how the parent company is doing as a whole. Consolidating the financial statements of child companies is often a complex undertaking, as subsidiaries can operate in different geographical regions, under different reporting languages and different currencies. This means that the consolidated financial statement must be prepared in a way that enables an apples-to-apples comparison between subsidiaries. 

The goal of consolidated financial statements is to present an enterprise as a single entity, which means that intra-group transactions and intra-group balances need to be eliminated. Only then can an enterprise in its entirety be fairly evaluated and understood.  

Consolidated management statements lay out the financial situation and performance of a group of companies viewed as a single enterprise. The consolidated management statements, unlike the statutory consolidated financial statements, have two main purposes: 

1. Responding to regulatory demands, analyzing not only financial statements but also management reports. Therefore, it’s necessary for report creators to provide of extra-accounting information (such as quantitative information on sales, production, purchases or KPI’s) and financial information along with management report in order to develop a cash flow of the business dimensions (ex. products, sales channels, operating divisions or other).
2. Frequently analyze the data (monthly or quarterly) in advance of financial statement closing. For this reason, it’s necessary to consolidate the financial statements quickly and integrate data with manual adjustments. 

Statutory and management consolidation is the process of closing the books, collecting data and consolidating all financials so that reports can be created for both managerial and regulatory disclosure purposes in accordance with IFRS and US GAAP.

In a mergers and acquisition context, statutory consolidation can also refer to the scenario where two businesses merge to create a new company but neither of the previous companies continue to exist.

In a close-to-disclosure context, financial consolidation is defined by IAS 27 as when the “Financial statements of a group [including] the assets, liabilities, equity, income, expenses and cash flows of the parent (company) and its subsidiaries are presented as those of a single economic entity." 

 

An essential part of monthly closing, reconciliations management is the process of comparing two sets of records with the purpose of ensuring that both sets are matched and accurate. Reconciliation management is important because it determines whether the funds that leave an account match the amount spent. Thus, reconciling accounts ensures no money is missing or fraudulently withdrawn. 

Until recently, reconciliations management was a laborious, bottlenecked process, and yet necessary for understanding the account balance and to meet regulatory and auditing requirements. The reason it was so burdensome, especially for companies operating in different regions or with multiple account levels, was because of the disparity between data versions and data types. For this reason, many members of the Office-of-Finance are choosing to go with a consolidation and close solution that eliminates manual spreadsheet or paper based reconciliations. They now recognise the need for capabilities like automated matching and exceptions that can handle entities of all sizes, with multiple processes, and multiple lines of business.