The GL Company
Presents
7 Steps to Financial Integrity
Presented by: James Taylor
Account Manager
The GL Company Australasia
Financial Integrity
 Ensuring that financial information accurately reflects the
underlying accounting transactions
 … and that the accuracy of the information can be easily
verified
Who cares about Financial Integrity?
 Who doesn’t?
 Legal requirement to accurately report financials
 Organisations need relevant, reliable, timely financial
information in order to operate effectively, to:
 Control costs
 Review revenue
 Ensure on-going financial viability
Two Words…..
Month End
Does it Send shivers down your spine????
Challenges in achieving Financial Integrity
 Time pressure
 Difficult reporting, reconcilliation & validation processes
 Imperfect toolsets
 ERP Inquiry Screens & Report Writers
 Spreadsheets
 Business Intelligence & 3rd Party Reporting tools
Does this look familiar?
ERP inquiry screens & report writers
• Run directly against ERP system – good!
• Inquiry screens very limited & inflexible
• Report writers are technical IT tools
• No financial transparency in reports: hard-coded, static, no drill down
• Difficult & time-consuming to validate & reconcile reports
Spreadsheets & Excel-based solutions
Spreadsheets provide a familiar interface for
Accountants but compromise financial integrity:
• 95% of spreadsheets contain at least 1 error (KPMG white paper)
• Results can be manually adjusted - no audit trail on what’s changed
• Can easily be proliferated without security both internally & externally
• Many local copies are created, which is the correct version?
• Difficult to manage if the person who wrote them leaves
• No Control System. Who publishes what and when?
• Financial Integrity nightmare
Business Intelligence (BI)
Useful for post-month end management reporting
but does not necessarily provide Financial Integrity:
• Complex Meta Data / End User Layers (EUL) require
setup & on-going maintenance
• Limited financial transparency, difficult to reconcile
• Data often exported to separate database:
reports do not run over core accounting data
• Fixed set of reports - new requests require specification, development
(modification of Meta Data); a technical process prone to error
What’s needed
• Safe, secure, ad-hoc inquiry & reporting for accountants
• Real Time – post a journal, see the results immediately
• Pre-configured for the ERP system: meta data is built-in
• No staging – runs directly against core accounting system
• Financial transparency – drill to details & transactions
• Used by Accountants, not IT
• FAST – relieves time pressure at month end
7 Steps to Financial Integrity
1) Direct Inquiry
2) Interactive Trial Balance
3) Financial Transparency through drill down
4) Audit Unposted Batches
5) Review Currency Translation
6) Validate Financial Statement Lines
7) Analyse Results against Multiple Budgets
Step 1: Direct Inquiry
Inquire directly over the Balance & Journals
tables, not through a view, or against a data
extract. Post a journal & see the results
immediately.
Step 2: Interactive Trial Balance
Analyze Trial Balances & multiple accounts across
segments in summary or detail for multiple periods
on a single screen.
Step 3: Financial Transparency
Drill from consolidated account balances, to
transactions to sub ledgers to quickly
investigate issues.
Step 4: Unposted Batches
Reconcile between journals & financial statement
balances and investigate any unposted batches.
Step 5: Currency Translations
Review base and
translated
currency
summaries with
drill to Entered &
Accounted
journal amounts.
Step 6: Validate Financial Statements
Identify any
accounts missing
from financial
reporting lines by
validating parent
account rollups,
summary
accounts or
selecting totals
for ranges.
Step 7: Actuals ‘v’ Budgets
Analyze financial
results against
multiple budget
versions
simultaneously.
The 7 steps:
• Step 1: Direct Inquiry – Post a journal and see the results immediately
• Step 2: Interactive Trial Balance - Analyse accounts across segments,
consolidated or detailed
• Step 3: Financial Transparency - Drill from balances to transactions,
sub ledgers, journal entries
• Step 4: Unposted batches – Investigate unposted batch errors
• Step 5: Currency Conversions and Translations – Review base and
translated currency summaries
• Step 6: Validate Financial Statement Consolidation Lines – Identify
any accounts missing from financial reporting lines by validating parent
account rollups and summary accounts
• Step 7: Analyse Actuals Against Multiple Budget versions
• At the completion of the 7 steps, financial reports can be published in
confidence, with their financial integrity intact
Really Real Time Inquiry Suite
• Easy interface to audit the data in the Oracle General Ledger
• Pre-configured ad-hoc inquiry & reporting for Accountants
• Can be used to validate or replace FSGs
• Secure environment used by Accountants but controlled by IT
A few ANZ customers we’ve worked with
Really Real Time Inquiry Suite for Oracle
Are you involved in Month End or
Project Accounting?
We can help make your life easier
www.TheGLCompany.com