Planning & Forecasting

FP&A Done Right: The Role of Narrative Reporting in ESG

October 14, 2022 by Revelwood

ESG (environmental, social, governance) reporting is the talk of the Office of Finance. Does our company need to start thinking about ESG? When do we need to start reporting on our ESG efforts? And most importantly, how do we do this?

There are many approaches: leveraging existing investments in planning software and data analytics, relying on home-grown solutions, purchasing new, purpose-built applications, and more. One aspect of the ESG reporting continuum is that of narrative reporting.

In July 2022, Revelwood’s partner, Fluence Technologies, acquired Sturnis365, a solution for collaborative disclosure management and narrative reporting. “[The Sturnis365 acquisition] complements Fluence’s robust, enterprise financial consolidation, close and reporting solution, enabling time-pressed finance departments to spend more time on analysis while addressing broader mandates for narrative reporting, including internal board books, investor presentations and more stringent ESG reporting,” said Robert Kugel, SVP and Research Director at Ventana Research.

What is Narrative Reporting?

Narrative reporting goes beyond the numbers – and statutory disclosure – to automate the production and distribution of any internal or external report. It enables you to combine and consolidate financial, operational and external data sources and narrative text components such as management letters and notes to financial statements. It allows for input from multiple contributors from across a business – from auditors to executives.

Fluence states, “Bringing financial and non-financial together through integrated reporting sets you up to tell a more meaningful story about the business … You can tell those stories through an annual report, board books, lender reports or other investor updates.”

Narrative reporting provides meaning and context to your reports.

Narrative Reporting and ESG

According to Accenture, 68% of CFOs globally take responsibility for their organization’s ESG performance. ESG reporting encompasses non-financial data that needs to be linked to financial information. ESG metrics can help uncover business opportunities, attract investors and offer a competitive advantage. More and more companies are incorporating ESG concerns into capital allocations and plans. Sustainability is falling under organizations’ enterprise risk management strategy. All of these factors point to the significance and importance of reporting accurately and thoroughly on ESG. But numbers alone won’t tell the story.

“Organizations need to understand their ESG reporting obligations – today and into the future – and this reporting responsibility typically falls on the Office of Finance,” said Michael Morrison, CEO, Fluence. “At Fluence, we are committed to addressing these ESG reporting needs with our modern consolidation, close and reporting platform.”

Modern Accounting: Streamlining the Month-End Close

October 13, 2022 by Revelwood

This is a guest post from our partner BlackLine, explaining how to streamline and optimize the month-end close procedss.

What Is the Month-End Close Process?

The month-end close process is the series of activities accounting teams must monitor, perform, and review, on a monthly basis, to produce timely, accurate, and complete financial statements and related reporting. While the most important closing period comes at the end of the financial year, most businesses use month-end procedures to accurately track performance—a monthly closing process as part of regular accounting ensures that the numbers are reliable, stable, and accurate.

Why Is Optimizing the Month-End Close Important?

Extra time spent on the month-end close means less time spent on adding value through analysis and business partnering. Optimizing the month-end close will get financial numbers into the hands of leadership sooner to assist with timely analyses and smarter decision-making. Other reasons to optimize include better discipline, more structure, improved controls, more visibility, and reduced risk.

Flowchart for Month-End Close Process

Here is a month-end close process flowchart to visualize some of the key steps and processes.

What Are Month-End Procedures?

While traditionally a lot of the heavy lifting is done during a few peak days, the month-end close process is ongoing throughout the month as transactions are recorded in various systems.

Before reporting, accounting must capture, review, and make adjustments to data from disparate sources, which often include a primary ERP, other ERPs, sub-ledgers, banks, point-of-sale systems, and many others. When results are solidified and reviewed, accounting then reports results to stakeholders including internal management, external shareholders, regulatory bodies, and others.

When accountants think about the month-end close, they’re likely referring to the activities in the middle of the figure above, like substantiating balance sheet accounts, reconciling transactions, recording recurring journal entries, analyzing variances, monitoring critical tasks and controls, and supporting audits. These are the processes that require the most effort. These activities are traditionally performed manually in spreadsheets and stored in difficult to access emails or on shared drives.

How Long Does a Month-End Close Take?

Each company is different, so it’s impossible to say how long your month-end close should take. Surveys and research over the years show the month-end process generally takes between 5-10 days.

However, over the past decade, with help from technology, the close has been getting faster. According to Ventana Research in 2019, “63% of participants indicated their organization completes its monthly close within six business days, up from 53% in 2014, with nearly half (46%) now closing within four business days (the previous rate was 29%).”

Accounting teams face a lot of pressure to close the books fast because executives use the previous month’s financials to make business decisions for the upcoming months and quarters. Ventana Research notes, “Closing faster has value: 62% of those that close within six days say that the information they provide is timely, while only 39% of those that take longer say that.”

However, closing faster can mean a tradeoff between speed and accuracy. For example, using estimates rather than actuals can shave hours or days off your close, but that means your numbers may not be exact, and when it’s time to close the fiscal year, the actuals will still need to be determined. This may end up adding days to your year-end close.

What Are the Steps in the Closing Process?

Again, because all companies are different, there is no perfect month-end close checklist. For example, businesses that sell physical products will have the extra steps of tracking inventory while companies that are service-focused will not. Smaller companies may have fewer accounts while multinationals will have hundreds or thousands. But there are some key items most accounting teams will need and steps they’ll need to follow.

Some of the information accounting teams need to have on hand in order to close the monthly books:

Total revenue numbers
Bank account information
Inventory levels (if applicable)
Petty cash total
Financial statements
Balance sheets
Total fixed assets
Income and expense accounts
General ledger

Common steps in closing the month-end books:

Record all incoming cash and accounts receivable
Review expenses and accounts payable records
Reconcile accounts
Review fixed assets
Inventory count (if necessary)
Collect and review financial documents
Prepare financial statements
Review all information for accuracy

Best Practices for a Month-End Close Process

When thinking about best practices for the month-end close, you may want to ask yourself these three questions about your month-end close process:

1. Do I have sufficient visibility into the entire month-end close process?

2. Have we done all we can to mitigate risk?

3. Am I paying highly trained professionals to perform remedial tasks?

If you identify challenges based on those questions, you may want to implement some of these month-end close best practices.

Conduct Pre- and Post-close Team Meetings

During pre-close meetings, the team should discuss follow-up items from the previous month’s post-close meeting and determine the current month’s close schedule and timeline. This way everyone is clear on responsibilities and deadlines. You should also determine what staff should do if they run into barriers and how they should communicate any bottlenecks.

In post-close meetings, discuss what worked and what didn’t, and review assigned roles and responsibilities for the next month. Review any lessons learned, any variances or abnormalities, and entertain any proposed changes to the process.

Manage your Time, be Organized, and Communicate Efficiently

Understanding deadlines and schedules is critical so you can work toward an ideal close date. Being organized will help you stay on track. In addition, accountants must begin to cultivate strong written communication skills with the ability to think critically. They will also need strong oral communication skill and the ability to convey pertinent financial information to executive teams and stakeholders.

Build Relationships

Exceptional accountants know how to manage numbers and people. That requires cultivating a broader range of relationship skills today, such as how to work in a team and how to engage with other departments. If other departments are aware of what you are doing and what you’ll need for each month-end in advance, they may be more willing to contribute the financial data you need on time.

Take Advantage of Automation

Refocus your teams on analysis by replacing repetitive, spreadsheet-heavy work with leading-practice automation. Centralize data and close activities, automate journal entries and reconciliations, strengthen controls, and enhance visibility.

Common Challenges in a Month-End Close Process

Some challenges finance and accounting teams encounter when performing a manual close process include:

Team members don’t know what needs to be done and/or what is already completed
Inaccurate or incomplete data
Lack of standardization
Processes that are not clearly defined
Discrepancies between numbers
Delayed reconciliations due to errors, adjustments, and reclassifications
Lack of real-time data that results in little or no visibility and transparency

These challenges during the month-end close are likely why nearly 70% of CAOs recognize a need to change. The month-end close process relies on many people, technology, processes, and other inputs. As a result, accounting organizations are challenged by inconsistent data and processes and a lack of standardization across the enterprise—all while depending on spreadsheets, emails, phone calls, and in-person meetings to bring it all together.

As business leaders look for accounting to provide more real time insights, and while regulatory environments are increasingly complex, it becomes even more difficult for accounting to do it all on time without compromising compliance or control. Traditional manual accounting processes are simply not sustainable.

Transitioning away from manual workflows will give you access to one of the most efficient tools you’ll ever use: accounting automation.

How Financial Close Automation Technology Improves the Closing Process

In order to optimize the month-end close process, companies should embrace technology and innovation that enables transformation. Integrated solutions that address more than one aspect of the close process, and in particular, cloud solutions, are helping companies make the move to modern accounting—bit by bit. Let’s take a closer look at how automation technology improves the financial close process.

While there’s no one size fits all approach, many successful accounting organizations begin their optimization journey with close management by unifying data and processes and driving better accountability through visibility. Technology can be used to capture all tasks and embed workflow and segregation of duties. Leading solutions also help centralize supporting documents and provide dashboards for reporting on status and KPI’s.

Optimizing balance sheet substantiation and high-volume reconciliation processes is a natural next step, as preparing, reviewing, and retaining account reconciliations is a common pain point for accounting, and valuable resources spend a disproportionate amount of time on repetitive tasks like ticking and tying.

Technology not only standardizes account reconciliations using templates but improves continuity by embedding policies and procedures, reduces risk by importing general ledger account balances and other data directly from source systems, and drives efficiency by automating matching activities and up to 80% of certifications.

Another way to optimize the financial close is by addressing the journal entry process. Many organizations record hundreds, if not thousands of journal entries each month. Technology not only centralizes the journal entry process with workflow and integration to related balance sheet reconciliations but automates the creation, posting, and certification of a significant portion of a company’s entries. Harmonizing the process and supporting documentation in the cloud not only saves time during the close but also reduces audit testing and preparation.

Finally, intercompany accounting and governance is another area ripe for transformation, as it poses numerous challenges for accounting with complex regulatory requirements and cross-functional dependencies involving legal, tax, and other stakeholders. Accounting can use technology to proactively govern their intercompany process from transaction initiation through netting and settlement. End-to-end intercompany solutions facilitate the process with defined workflows, embedded controls, and automation.

This blog post was originally published on the BlackLine blog.

Modern Accounting: The Impact of Investing in Accounts Receivable

September 29, 2022 by Revelwood

This is a guest blog post from our partner BlackLine, explaining how to gain confidence cash flow.

Historically, accounts receivable (AR) has been the victim of a lack of investment from a technological perspective. Primarily, this lack of investment in AR is the result of something simple: a misunderstanding.

AR is largely regarded as a necessary but transactional back-office function and not something that creates a “value-add” for the business. Unlike the core accounting of bookkeeping, AR’s reputation is that of a kind of conveyor belt. Necessary, but low impact in the grand scheme of things. As a result, AR is the victim of fundamental misunderstandings regarding how it can be optimized—and the business impact that the right optimization can have.

When finance professionals think about how to streamline or optimize AR, typically it has been viewed as something that may be better offshored or that the ERP already handles. This is due to it being largely manual, time-consuming, and often transactional. But this simply moves the problem elsewhere, rather than solving the underlying issue.

Investing in technology that automates the accounts receivable function grants you complete visibility over the flow of cash into your business, in real-time. The data, intelligence, and real-time oversight of working capital that optimized AR offers to businesses are invaluable, for several key reasons.

Unlocking Working Capital

Applying customer payments to customer accounts quickly and accurately is the cornerstone of successful AR. However, manual processes lead to significant delays in unlocking crucial cash flow.

Money owed by customers is one of the largest assets on any balance sheet. A recent report by PwC estimated that the amount of working capital held hostage in this way is an enormous €1.2 trillion globally. According to PwC, releasing this cash would be enough for global companies to boost their capital investment by 55%, without the need to look externally for funding or put their cash flow under unnecessary pressure. With interest rates as they are right now, never mind what might be on the horizon, looking internally to find opportunities to streamline cash flow and payment processes is a no-brainer.

Let me give you an example: on average, organizations are paid on day 50-55. For a business with $500m revenue, each day is worth $2m. By automating and optimizing payment processes, businesses can potentially release a significant amount of cash into the bottom line that can then be put to work in the business.

Releasing cash from receivables is the quickest and cheapest way to more working capital, yet organizations continue to rely on manual processes which don’t provide proper visibility and tie up cash for far longer than necessary. Investing in AR frees up more working capital, which means stronger business resilience and enables more effective decision-making. Put simply, it puts much more power in your hands and leaves much less up to guesswork.

Maintaining Lasting Customer Relationships

Credit controllers used to be a lot more persistent. This was clear in the terminology they used. They looked at customers as “debtors.” This sounds more akin to something you’d read in a Dickens novel than the way a business refers to its trusted partners.

The way you treat your customers not only reflects your efficiency internally but crucially shapes perceptions, both for potential new customers and those who might be on the fence about jumping ship. Chasing a customer for a payment that was made days before, simply because you’re reliant on manual processes that don’t give you proper visibility, could reflect poorly on your organization. Aside from the wasted time and effort, receiving an erroneous demand for payment on a bad day could be the difference between a continued relationship and a swift parting of ways.

Customers provide the value for our organizations. It’s our customers that are going to support us through the tough times. A mindset shift is required here at all levels of business, including the C-suite. Customers should be treated with the same respect when they owe money as when they don’t. Investing in AR creates the visibility over customer payment behaviors that is essential to this.

The right solution can unlock decision intelligence by removing time-consuming and error-prone processes involved in preparing, transforming, and visualizing data. This lets your teams make more informed decisions around credit risk policies, collection strategies, or credit limit increases to create greater value for the business. It can help you gain visibility into customer behavior changes. This could unlock opportunities for you to work with customers to solve payment challenges before they become a major problem, or increase their line of credit and in turn, your revenue. This can improve profitability by reducing the financial risks posed by write-offs and late payments.

Creating greater visibility over real-time payments allows you to leave the war of attrition over unpaid invoices behind. This leads to a more customer-centric approach to credit, collections, and complaints that can help you to maintain good customer relationships.

Retaining Talent for a Competitive Advantage

In an increasingly competitive business environment, the ability to attract and retain top talent is crucial to business success. A recent survey commissioned by BlackLine suggests that one of the first steps finance and accounting needs to take to retain their best workers is to eliminate transactional, mundane work. More than a quarter (28%) of FP&A professionals surveyed said there weren’t opportunities to learn new skills because transactional work takes up so much time, while a similar number (26%) claimed that they had become bored of the mundane, repetitive nature of their jobs. What’s more, a quarter (26%) also claimed not to have time to focus on future career development.

It’s clear that your talent wants to spend their time adding value, regardless of function. Completing a long list of manual tasks, which could be automated, is not adding value. If 80% of your time is spent on routine tasks that can be automated, that’s 80% of your value gone before any major or strategic tasks arise. This wasted energy wastes your employees, which passes on up the chain.

Automation frees up F&A team members to focus on strategic, more career-focused goals, ensuring their motivation and energy is spent bringing value to your business (and not someone else’s).

Don’t Let Manual Processes Decide Your Fate

Many organizations have now automated processes such as accounts payable, but the prevalence of manual processes in accounts receivable continues to pose serious health issues for businesses. The problem is that automating some processes and not others could ultimately cost you more than you bargained for. If the budget only stretches so far, it’s essential to upgrade the process that will have the biggest impact. Let me explain by way of an analogy.

Imagine you need to dig a hole somewhere in your back garden. You could do it with a shovel, but it needs to be a very large hole, so doing it that way would take a huge amount of time and exhausting effort. So, you hire a contractor with the right equipment. This gets the job done much faster and with much less effort. The problem is, you didn’t know where exactly to dig the hole to begin with and you’ve dug it in the wrong place. Now, not only do you still need to dig the hole, but you need to repair the large area of back garden that is now a building site.

Automating some FP&A processes but leaving AR up to manual processes creates a similarly traumatic scenario. Choosing to invest in accounts receivable opens up a treasure trove of intelligence and profitability that could make the difference between success or failure. When it comes to accounts receivable, investment is no longer a nice-to-have, it is now a must-have for survival.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Filter Option in Set Editor

September 27, 2022 by Dillon Rossman

Did you know IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) update 76 introduced a new filter option in the set editor? Previously, you could create a filter or multiple filters and the set would show the members that meet the criteria for every filter. Now you can have the set show any member that matches any of the filters.

Within the set editor, when you click filter you will now see two options, “Match all of the following” and “Match any of the following”.

Graphical user interface, application

Description automatically generated

“Match all of the following” is the equivalent of what previously existed. “Match any of the following” is new functionality. For a simple example, I will try to filter this set to show months containing “Jan” or “Feb”.

Using the “Match all of the following” functionality this will return nothing because no month will contain “Jan” AND “Feb.

Graphical user interface, text, application

Description automatically generated

However, if I use the new “Match any of the following” functionality to search for members that contain “Jan” OR “Feb” I will get the results I am looking for.

Table

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Revelwood has worked with IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 for more than 27 years. We’ve partnered with hundreds of companies on the design, development, maintenance and updates of IBM Planning Analytics applications, across every industry. Have a challenge with Planning Analytics / TM1? We can help you!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Garbage Memory

August 23, 2022 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

I recently had a customer ask me why Windows was showing a much larger memory footprint than what was expected (based on their cube sizes). After further analyzing their model, we saw a large amount of garbage memory … which led to the question “what is garbage memory?”

As you know, IBM Planning Analytics uses various approaches to minimize the amount of RAM needed for a model. PA (Planning Analytics) is very good about only taking what it needs to support views, calculations, and processing. However, I sometimes like to compare PA to a small child – it is very good at only taking what it needs, but it’s not so good at giving it back when it’s done. This is does this on purpose since results are stored for future reference, thereby providing faster results for your users. The excess memory that was being and is no longer needed is called garbage memory.

You can determine how much memory is being used by enabling performance monitoring and reviewing the }StatsForServer control cube.

So how do you release (or reset) the amount of memory used by PA? You can do this by simply recycling your PA server. Revelwood recommends recycling your service at least once per week. Not only will this reset the amount of memory used on the machine, but it will also help with other basic maintenance tasks such as ensuring your transaction log data is properly written to disk.

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Data Integration and the Planning Data Source

August 17, 2022 by Marc Assenza Leave a Comment

Did you know that Workday Adaptive Planning integrations can use the metadata in Adaptive Planning as a part of the integration?

It’s true! The process requires setting up the credential and setting up a data source for Adaptive Planning. You must have the proper credentials yourself within Adaptive Planning to set this up.

To set up the credential you will need to do the following:

From the Workday navigation button, go to Integration🡪Design Integrations

You will arrive at the following screen. Under the Component Library section click on the Credentials option.

From the list that is presented, the first option is to Create a new Credential, select this.

Once clicked, the following list will be presented, select Planning Credential, and give it a name. Giving it a name that is meaningful matters, Adaptive certainly fits the bill here.

Once created, you will see that your credential exists under credentials in the Component Pane, but no access to the data source has been granted yet because no authorized user has been assigned. To assign an authorized user (a user with the rights to perform all these steps) to the credentials, you follow the on-screen instructions and click “Authorize” under the Actions panel.

When you click authorize, the following appears, enter the credentials in the pop-up screen and click “Authorize” on the lower right-hand portion of the screen.

Next you will want to click the Save button to save the login information with the credential.

The next step will be to Test the connection. This is done by clicking on “Test Connection” under the Actions pane. A pop-up window will display, click on “Test.” If the login credentials are valid, the following window will appear and the credential is all set up.

To set up the data source, you will need to do the following:

Under the Component Library, click on Data Sources.

Click on the option “Create New Data Source.”

Here again select Planning Data Source and give it a meaningful name, keeping the name the same in this example and calling it Adaptive.

Once the Data Source is created, the following screen will appear. Here you will assign the Data Source the Credential that was created in step 1 and save it.

You will notice that no tables have appeared. That is because we have not defined them yet.

On the left-hand side under Actions, click on “Manage Sources.”

The following popup window will appear, click on the sources folder first, then click on the Add button.

You will now see a list; in the example we will import metadata about Accounts and Levels. Those two will be selected.

You have the option to rename the source, so Accounts and Levels will be used in place of the default name.

No tables are in the Data Source yet because the Data Source needs to be saved and the structure needs to be imported. Click the Save option first followed by “Import Structure.”

The table structures are now present as seen below.

The next step is to import the data, this is done by clicking “Import Data” under the Actions pane.

That’s all it takes to set up the credential and the Adaptive Data Source, now you’re ready to utilize it in the Staging area for integration however you see fit!

Visit Revelwood’s Knowledge Center for our Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks or sign up here to get our Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks delivered directly to your inbox. Not sure where to start with Workday Adaptive Planning? Our team here at Revelwood can help! Contact us info@revelwood.com for more information.

Modern Accounting: Why Does Intercompany Accounting Crash Your Close?

August 11, 2022 by Revelwood

This is a guest blog post from our partner BlackLine, explaining why intercompany accounting is killing your close.

It’s a fact of life that if you can’t reconcile your intercompany accounts, you can’t close your books. The goal of intercompany accounting is netting to zero across the entire company. However, as multinational companies know, that is easier said than done—especially when it comes to billing services.

Deficient processes anywhere in the intercompany chain cause delays in controllership and impact a company’s monthly, quarterly, or annual close.

The Challenges of Intercompany

Without standardized intercompany processes, the risk of problems and delays that “kill your close” is high.

Poorly executed intercompany agreements

Intercompany accounting starts with an agreement between parties acting as either a seller and/or buyer to other entities in the multinational corporation. An intercompany agreement specifies what type of products will be delivered or services will be billed. It will also include details such as who is to be invoiced, what indirect taxes apply, and may even note restrictions around getting money out of the country where the buyer entity operates. If no actual agreement is in place, or if the agreement is poorly executed, mistakes must be undone and disagreements resolved. This takes extra time.

Incorrectly booked invoices

Problems progress from there as some invoices are simply not booked correctly. Perhaps a lower-level employee new to their position inadvertently books an invoice incorrectly or in a way that is inconsistent with the intercompany agreement. When it comes time to roll up the accounting, there is a disconnect between how the entities involved in the transaction accounted for that invoice. Ultimately, late in the game, the accounting team discovers these inconsistencies and must investigate where the disconnect occurred and effect a correction. This problem is further compounded as a multitude of inconsistencies roll up through the organization increasing by both number and associated value. If these issues cannot be rectified by the end of the month or quarter, they will become costly to plug.

Lack of communication

A lack of communication and standardized processes creates problems on both sides of intercompany transactions. For example, if a seller sends an invoice to the wrong distribution list or responsible person, the invoice never gets booked. Without proof of a counterparty confirmation, of a person saying, “I agree to book this,” the risk of a delay is high.

Problems on the buyer’s side arise when invoices are not processed properly. The buyer needs to book whatever service or product they receive to the right function, to the right department. This must be done in a timely manner to minimize disruptions.

Inquiries and disputes

The expedient management of inquiries and disputes presents a final challenge. Even when intercompany invoice trafficking is efficient, the person receiving the invoice may disagree with the charges. In some cases, buyers don’t communicate that they have a dispute until an invoice is overdue, putting additional time pressure on the resolution process.

Considering how many invoice disputes happen throughout the year, it’s easy to see how a poorly executed inquiry and dispute management process can critically slow a company’s close. This is further frustrated when buyers or sellers are organized in silos managing their own entity’s books while working to keep their costs down. With this perspective, if they don’t agree to pay an invoice, it doesn’t affect their margins, targets, or KPIs. They are not concerned with how an outstanding intercompany invoice impacts the larger organization.

Is a Shared Services Team the Answer?

These intercompany challenges often drive the creation of shared service centers or centers of excellence which are tapped to manage intercompany invoicing across the enterprise. When well-formulated, these organizations can streamline intercompany invoice management and, seeing the larger picture, should increase accuracy and timeliness. However, these teams must be more than dedicated personnel assigned to intercompany tasks. Without thoughtful process design and automation and separated from the sourcing decisions by continents and time zones, a shared services team may actually increase errors. A poorly run, poorly trained shared services team also suffers from staff turnover—exacerbating mistakes.

Pressure On the Accounting Team

For the accounting team, trying to tie up the intercompany accounts at the corporate level can be extra challenging. They must track down knowledgeable parties at the entity level that may be operating in different time zones and with different work rules and holiday schedules. They face additional stress when the accounting close deadline looms, often having to spend days and nights trying to source information and resolve issues. Often, they are forced to make unfortunate write downs when time is up. The pressure becomes worse at the end of the year when issues cannot be carried over to be resolved in the next quarter.

How to Address These Intercompany Challenges

It is important to get your intercompany process right from the start. Make it well-defined and executed so that you’re not wasting time, money, and resources. Intercompany should be a net-zero game so a good policy ensures that information is right on both sides of the transaction at every stage of the process.

To prevent intercompany from killing your close, you need to establish a global intercompany standard. It should:

Eliminate the silos and outline how to get things done
Make sure invoices are booked into the right accounts and in a timely manner
Specify timing—for example, dictate the last day in the month/quarter that intercompany charges must be billed
Improve training for the shared service center team, especially new members
Make entity-level staff or shared services teams tie up outstanding intercompany transactions early enough so that the business unit and corporation are completed in a timely manner
Give you time to reconcile

How BlackLine Can Help

BlackLine helps companies centralize the management of intercompany processes, technology, and master data to create improved tax and resource efficiency while reducing operating costs. Our solution automates intercompany accounting by translating relevant data into compliant invoices and documentation to support intercompany transactions, real-time audits, and improved transaction transparency while reducing operational costs.

The art of establishing company-wide process uniformity requires experienced intercompany pros. BlackLine has guided consistency across customer organizations improving compliance and reducing risk at some of the world’s largest corporations. Uniformity and consistency are important defense lines in any transfer pricing audit as they communicate a sense of control and defend against disorder.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Customizing Background Colors for Data and Header Cells

August 9, 2022 by Dillon Rossman Leave a Comment

Did you know that update 76 of IBM Planning Analytics allows you to customize background colors for data and header cells within your Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) views?

To customize these colors, click on a view within a page in PAW and open the “Properties” menu.

Within the “Properties” menu expand “Text Properties”. Within this section you will notice three subsections: “Data Cell”, “Row Header”, and “Column Header”. Each of these sections includes a setting called “Fill Color”, which defines the background color.

In this example, I will update the data cell background color to a light blue.

The data cells are now a light blue.

The same can be accomplished for the row and column headers, giving complete control over the colors in your PAW view.

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Utilizing Split Rows in Modeled Sheets

August 3, 2022 by Dillon Rossman Leave a Comment

Do you know how to utilize splits in Workday Adaptive Planning for a modeled sheet? Splits allow you to have multiple lines as part of one record and you can set splits on a column-by-column basis.

A use case might be a personnel model in which you want the ability to allocate a single employee to multiple departments. To turn on splits, navigate to the settings of your modeled sheet and click “Columns and Levels.”

From here, click on the “Sheet Properties” button

Within the pop-up menu, click on “Settings” then enable “Allow Splits” and hit “OK”

Once this is completed, you will notice each column now has a checkbox for “Split.” In this example we will turn this on for the “Department” and “Allocation” columns.

Within our sheet we have an existing row for John Smith. In order to create split rows we just have to right-click on John Smith’s row and select “Split Row.”

Once the split row is added you will see that only the two columns we designated with splits are split. The information from the consolidated row gets carried down to the split rows for the non-split columns.

In this example I will create two split rows. I’d like to allocate John Smith to two departments. After adding a second two split row, updating the information, and saving the sheet, you will now see two split rows that are each allocated 50% to their department and a consolidated row that totals up to a 100% allocation.

You could have accomplished the same end result with multiple independent rows, however, splits provide several benefits including:

Non-split columns will automatically copy the consolidated row data to the split rows.
Split rows are grouped together.
Groupings show the summations of split column values, in this example you can see the allocation percentages add up to 100%. Independent rows would not clearly show you an employee is allocated 100%.

Planning & Forecasting

What is Narrative Reporting?

Narrative Reporting and ESG

Read more in our series on ESG reporting:

What Is the Month-End Close Process?

Why Is Optimizing the Month-End Close Important?

Flowchart for Month-End Close Process

What Are Month-End Procedures?

How Long Does a Month-End Close Take?

What Are the Steps in the Closing Process?

Best Practices for a Month-End Close Process

Conduct Pre- and Post-close Team Meetings

Manage your Time, be Organized, and Communicate Efficiently

Build Relationships

Take Advantage of Automation

Common Challenges in a Month-End Close Process

How Financial Close Automation Technology Improves the Closing Process

Read more about Modern Accounting:

Unlocking Working Capital

Maintaining Lasting Customer Relationships

Retaining Talent for a Competitive Advantage

Don’t Let Manual Processes Decide Your Fate

Read more about Modern Accounting:

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

To set up the credential you will need to do the following:

To set up the data source, you will need to do the following:

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

The Challenges of Intercompany

Poorly executed intercompany agreements

Incorrectly booked invoices

Lack of communication

Inquiries and disputes

Is a Shared Services Team the Answer?

Pressure On the Accounting Team

How to Address These Intercompany Challenges

How BlackLine Can Help

Read more Modern Accounting blogs:

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

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