Beat CFO Insomnia and Go from Chaos to Control

It’s a tough job. From drum-tight audits to flawless compliance, as a CFO, everything that drives the company’s financials rests on your shoulders. Seemingly small weaknesses can cause a rift in accuracy, leaving even the toughest of CFO’s to lose sleep night after night. We’ve listed 6 common financial system weaknesses, and how to strengthen them.

1. Spreadsheets

Love them or hate them, they have their place. Unfortunately, their place is not everywhere in your office. Spreadsheets are great in a pinch or for limited tasks, but their error-prone design can easily lead to cascading data errors.

Solution: For tasks like revenue management or consolidations, seek automation with the cloud.

2. Outdated Reporting and Slow Answers

Today’s companies make quick, informed financial decisions on the fly. If your teams are working with in-house systems to manually compile, filter, sort and re-sort your data, by the time those reports circulate, the data’s already gone stale.

Solution: Get real-time, system-compiled data available to decision-makers through cloud-based reporting and dashboards with the right financial system – like Sage Intacct. No time machine required.

3. Time Consuming and Error-Prone Consolidations

With multiple entities, if your company’s consolidations are being done manually, so much can go wrong. Currency conversions, complicated formulas and endless spreadsheets leave room for one manual mistake to throw everything into chaos.

Solution: With a financial management system that focuses on growth, your company can perform one-click consolidations reduce errors, save time, and ensure accuracy and compliance.

4. Under-billing Time and Expenses

When teams in the field and have to wait until they’re at their desks to track time and expenses, your billing may not be as accurate as you think. Chances are good that things are going undocumented, and unbilled.

Solution: Everywhere-accessible automation. With Sage Intacct’s cloud-based time-tracking and expense features, your team can log project-based items from anywhere, at any time.

5. Ill-Fitting On-Premises Software

With on-premises software, companies often have to upgrade for customizations, bend and flex to get system updates and maintenance, and endure long implementation timelines. Many times, these companies end up with wasted features that sound great at initial buy-in, but in the end, don’t meet a need.

Solution: With the cloud, growing businesses see tighter information security and software reliability, customizable options, and automatic updates and configurations for reasonable monthly subscriptions.

6. Software Solutions that Don’t Play Well Together

When software solutions don’t integrate, people can’t access information they need. Further, data needs to be manually entered sometimes two and three times in multiple systems, leaving it vulnerable to error. The company is left with disconnected teams and a fuzzy financial picture.

Solution: Sage Intacct – a best-in-class cloud financial management solution – offers seamless integrations so data moves easily between many of today’s best-in-class cloud systems. Companies can reduce their manual entry time, and customize their integrations to fit their needs while also getting a real-time company picture to keep every department running smoothly.

Still have questions? Pick up the phone or drop us a line. We’re here to help you get peace of mind, and some shut-eye!