Financial consolidation can be time-consuming and challenging, especially when carried out manually. Despite the tedious nature of financial consolidation, it is essential to maintain the highest level of precision in the results. The consolidated financial statements serve as a key resource for stakeholders, including shareholders, investors, regulatory bodies, and internal management. These stakeholders rely on the accuracy of the consolidated financial information to gain insights into the company's overall performance, financial health, and compliance.

JustPerform is a highly-rated financial consolidation platform with a 4.74 out of 5 rating in the 2023 BPM Pulse Awards. It enhances the accuracy of your consolidated results with the help of the in-built scenarios and automated data transformation.  In this blog, we'll explore 5 ways JustPerform can power up your financial consolidation processes

1. Saves time with in-built IFRS/GAAP scenarios

Financial consolidation is a complex process that involves consolidating data from various entities across different geographic locations and currencies. This process is often carried out manually using tools like Excel, with no clear workflows. Even if you have access to software, identifying all the consolidation scenarios to comply with can be challenging and time-consuming.

JustPerform simplifies the financial consolidation process by providing in-built scenarios that comply with all statutory requirements, including IFRS and Multi-GAAP. Instead of spending significant time identifying applicable scenarios, users can simply select the relevant ones. 

JustPerform automatically generates models, process flows, and reports to execute the processes. These inbuilt scenarios are based on best practices of financial consolidation processes, after thorough research and analysis.

2. Ensures smooth integration and data flow

The importance of data and integrations in financial consolidation cannot be overstated, especially when dealing with data from various sister entities situated in different countries. Each entity may have their own unique data management processes that need to comply with that country's statutory requirements. Combining this data into a comprehensive consolidated results require seamless integration of various source systems and data lakes. 

The challenge is to ensure that all data is accurately transferred to the consolidation system while maintaining consistency and compliance with statutory requirements.

JustPerform's ability to integrate with over 80 data sources provides businesses with a seamless and smooth flow of data using direct connectors and APIs. With its visual data flow designer, business users can easily manage data mapping and wrangling, without depending on technical teams.

Additionally, the JustPerform Excel Add-in allows data in Excel to be accurately brought into the platform with minimal manual intervention, saving countless hours of time. Built-in validations ensure that all data input in the form of Excel is accurate before entering the system, providing businesses with reliable and accurate data

3. Lets you take control of your data transformation

Since consolidation is a collation of entries of different entities, it involves many calculations and data transformations. Especially when large numbers of entities are involved, currency conversion, eliminations and posting journals can be complex with fixed closing timelines.

Every entity not based in the headquarter country has a conversion rate, and every transaction between the entities has some eliminations to follow. Doing these manually or even running Excel macros would be time-consuming and very complex to understand. Most of the legacy solutions depend on coding-based logic to perform these adjustments, increasing dependency on tech teams.

JustPerform simplifies and declutters data transformation activity with a user-friendly business rule framework. This business rule framework empowers users to easily create, edit, and maintain business rules without coding, thereby enabling effortless data transformation. 

4. Enables faster change management

Consolidation is highly susceptible to market changes, such as fluctuations in conversion rates or entities conforming to new standards and changing regulatory requirements. These changes have very little tolerance for errors and require timely updates. Moreover, acquisitions, mergers, and takeovers alter the overall structure of the organization, demanding changes in the consolidation process. However, most legacy consolidation platforms encounter bottlenecks in implementing these structural changes, and the process can be extremely time-consuming if proper workflows are not in place.

Legacy solutions are not built to handle rapidly changing consolidation scenarios, further complicating the process. In some cases, it may even require constant back-and-forth change cycles with the system integrator to implement the changes.

All changes and their impacts can be quickly and easily updated across the consolidation process within JustPerform, eliminating the need to make multiple updates in different places. This ensures consistency and accuracy throughout the consolidation process. 

Additionally, JustPerform's visual mapping makes it easier to understand the relationships between different entities and their impact on the overall consolidation process. Overall, JustPerform's user-friendly approach to change management and visual representation of the enterprise structure simplifies the change management in consolidation process and ensure complete compliance always.

5. Brings efficiency into your reporting

Reporting is critical to financial consolidation, enabling stakeholders like regulatory boards, shareholders and auditors to gain insights into the organization's performance. It allows users to view the consolidated financial results of the organization and understand how each entity contributes to the overall picture and how an organization performs.

Consolidating data from different sources and presenting it in a standardized format can be complex. Additionally, the need to comply with accounting standards and regulatory requirements demands great diligence and significant effort in report creation. 

JustPerform offers inbuilt auditor-friendly reports saving lots of valuable time and efforts in report creation. The top-rated consolidation platform provides the ability to drill-down to a detailed level in a report to simplify and improve auditability. Along with granular auditability, JustPerform can also help you in real-time reporting in both web and Excel interface.