Last Mile of Finance
The Last Mile of Finance is comprised of the management processes that organizations perform after the monthly, quarterly, and annual trial balance close to prepare financial statements and disclosures. These management processes are generally manual and not automated, resulting in a myriad of risks, including material errors, data delays, inaccurate reporting, and restatements.
While many organizations have implemented ERP and Financial Consolidation systems, there remains a significant need to transform the plethora of manual processes that remain. GMI’s Last Mile of Finance capabilities improve quality and timeliness in this area, while reducing risk and cost.
How GMI’s Last Mile of Finance Solution Works
Our Last Mile of Finance solution automates the currently-manual aspects of the financial close process, leveraging conditional workflow capabilities in order to facilitate document preparation and handoffs, provide financial control, ensure accountability and transparency, alert participants when work is due, track status, and collect disclosure information.
- Enhanced Transaction Processing: Our platform is not intended to provide routine ERP-like transaction processing capabilities, but rather is used by Finance teams to enhance transaction processing in currently-manual processes, ranging from the desire for more effective policy and procedure management through to improved revenue recognition via “smart forms,” simplified intercompany management, and better management of manual journal entries.
- Closing, Consolidation & Reporting: Eliminate manual tasks and errors and improve the timeliness and control of the close process with capabilities such as Closing Checklists, Closing Calendars, Financial Issue Management, and others. Our solution provides for the central management of all close-related documentation, including the chart of accounts, complex contracts, accounting policies and procedures etc. In addition, the solution provides for the effective submission, review, and approval of critical non-routine transactions and estimates such as closing journal entries, complex transaction reviews, manual journal entries, and out-of-period adjustments. All financial statement preparation tasks and disclosure information is easily assimilated, reviewed, and approved in the system.
- Tax Management: Simplify a wide range of manual, time consuming, and often error-prone tax accounting and compliance processes such as FAS 5 and FIN 48 Quarterly Requests, Interim Income Tax Provisions, Annual Income Tax Cash Flow Forecasts, Property and Sales Tax Compliance, Foreign Entities, and Tax Roll-Forward Reconciliations.
- Treasury Management: GMI’s Last Mile of Finance solution also applies to Treasury in areas such as Cash Forecasting, Working Capital Management, Risk Management, and Reporting.
- Improved Financial Control: Our solutions also provide robust capabilities to improve financial control, including comprehensively addressing Sarbanes-Oxley requirements as well as providing robust compliance, monitoring, and certification/self-assessment capabilities.
Why Use GMI’s Last Mile of Finance Solution
The costs of financial reporting are rapidly increasing due to more and more regulatory pressures. Research has shown that bottom performers spend five times more on the Last Mile of Finance than the top performers. Our solution substantially reduces risk and costs, and improves cycle time, financial control, and compliance with policies, procedures, and regulations.