Automated year-end disclosure management: a simple solution to a complex problem

The year-end period demands tax and finance teams work tirelessly, meet tight deadlines, and pay close attention to details. In many companies, this is largely due to the legacy manual processes underpinning year-end disclosures. This leads to a number of limitations for tax and finance teams that increase their workload and stress, including the following:

• Inefficient copying and pasting – without a single, integrated year-end reporting solution, copy-and-paste processes are the norm. Manual financial reporting means downstream documents often have to be revisited and edited.

• Siloed narratives – users have multiple systems of record for narrative content, so the data must be manually distributed and is not synchronised across platforms and documents associated with the year-end reporting cycle.

• Complex collaboration – multiple systems of record scatter comments across the platforms of geographically distributed teams. Everything is managed across multiple locations, resulting in multiple copies of the same information.

• The pain of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) tagging – in an increasing number of jurisdictions, government tax authorities are requiring businesses to use XBRL tags in the information they provide with tax filings. Many companies are still outsourcing the process of adding these tags to year-end reports because they cannot do so in-house. Employing manual financial reporting processes with embedded XBRL capabilities wastes money and involves extra steps, adding days to the year-end reporting process.

A webinar hosted by insightsoftware – a global provider of reporting, analytics, and performance management solutions – on November 16 2023 showed how these challenges can be addressed and disclosure reporting can be streamlined through its Certent Disclosure Management solution. Cal-Maine Foods, the largest producer and distributor of shell eggs in the US, shared its journey of migrating its financial and regulatory reporting to the system.

The resources linked to below provide guidance on how to effectively navigate the year-end disclosure landscape, covering issues such as:

• Automating reports;

• Tightening controls;

• Data consistency;

• System collaboration; and

• Having the right narrative.

This white paper explores how disclosure management software has become essential in centralising and managing necessary year-end close documents through a single source of truth. Learning how to avoid the pitfalls of versioning and data entry can speed up the year-end close cycle and reduce the risk of inaccurate disclosure.

In this case study, LifePoint Health, the US healthcare service provider, uses a disclosure management solution to increase its year-end close reporting efficiency while ensuring its disclosures meet regulatory requirements. After implementing a disclosure management solution for year-end reports, tax and finance teams have a much more efficient process and can utilise Excel to update information immediately.

Read this blog on the benefits of integrating disclosure management into an in-house system. Learn how to meet the demands of the increasingly nuanced complexities of electronic year-end reporting with a tool that complements current systems, is cost effective, is easy to implement, and provides what is needed.

This blog explains how efficient year-end disclosure management can significantly reduce disclosure risk. Understanding the advantages that come with the ability to combine words and numbers for publication and exercising greater control over recurring multi-author reports helps to bring speed, accuracy, and consistency to year-end processes.

This brochure suggests how to overcome traditional year-end management reporting challenges such as versioning overlap and risky manual processes. Learn how to produce automated and scalable recurring reports that include narrative around the numbers and effectively communicate business performance to important stakeholders.

With a new year-end disclosure management solution in place, LV=, the UK insurance company, experienced a significant reduction in the time spent producing recurring internal and external reports. The finance team increased controls around the process, gained a vote of confidence with their auditors, and reduced overall risk. In this case study, find out how the solution gives them a single source of truth for their year-end disclosures.

For many CFOs, the remote working shift and the ensuing need for secure collaboration highlighted a key gap in digital transformation strategies. In this video, see how finance teams have navigated the challenge of connecting data sources and enabling remote collaboration during the year-end close process. Learn how they ensure data consistency across finance, sustainability, and investor relations for end-of-year reporting cycles.

Discover four ways to more efficiently manage financial year-end disclosures in this blog. By automating and integrating reporting disclosure processes, vast amounts of manual effort can be eliminated and teams can be relieved of the overload that is often associated with year-end processes.

Visit the insightsoftware website to learn more about Certent Disclosure Management.

Insightsoftware is a leading provider of reporting, analytics, and performance management solutions. Over 32,000 organisations worldwide rely on the firm to support business needs in the areas of accounting, finance, operations, supply chain, tax, budgeting, planning, HR, and disclosure management. It enables the office of the CFO to connect to, and make sense of, their data in real time so they can proactively drive greater financial intelligence across their organisation. Insightsoftware’s best-in-class solutions provide customers with increased productivity, visibility, accuracy, and compliance.