196.8 hours! This is how long an organisation can complete their financial close process if done solely on spreadsheets. But this is a thing of the past. Organisations have progressively shifted to modern consolidation platforms due to their enhanced efficiency and accuracy. 

These platforms offer real-time data consolidation, enabling organisations to make timely and informed decisions. They reduce manual processes and potential errors associated with traditional consolidation methods, thereby increasing productivity.

Modern consolidation platforms also facilitate improved compliance with evolving regulatory standards and provide a platform for future scalability. In an era characterised by dynamic business environments, these platforms offer a competitive edge by enabling quick adaptability to changes.

Let's dive deep into what consolidation constitutes and what should organisations do about each one.

4 important aspects of consolidation

Before we jump into the key aspects of consolidation, here are a few vital questions finance teams need to ask themselves. 

Are manual consolidation tasks dominating your organization's daily activities? Does the consolidation process seem endlessly time-consuming? Are you still waiting to access real-time data at your fingertips? If you answered 'yes' to any of these questions, JustPerform could be the solution you've been waiting for.

JustPerform is a cloud-native platform designed to streamline and simplify your financial processes. Unique in its ability to be fully managed by your finance team, it eliminates the need for IT intervention, giving you complete control. 

Recognised for its excellence, JustPerform has consistently received the 'Outstanding' award from BPM Partners for Consolidation. It boasts a high rating of 4.7 on Gartner, reflecting its superior performance and customer satisfaction.

JustPerform Consolidation Hub

JustPerform Consolidation Hub along with Financial Consolidation app offers a comprehensive solution for financial consolidation and reporting. It simplifies data assembly, ensures compliance, and provides an intuitive user experience. Features like seamless data integration and automated data transformations enhance the consolidation process's speed, accuracy, and auditability.

To truly understand JustPerform's impact, let's delve into the Key aspects of consolidation. 

1. Data 

Data is a cornerstone of the consolidation process but is often fraught with challenges. Disparate data sources, manual data standardisation, and the need for data cleansing can make it a time-consuming and error-prone task.

JustPerform's Consolidation Hub is designed to overcome these hurdles. It ensures flawless financial data gathering from various sources like different ERP systems or accounting systems, whether legacy or modern. 

With guided data flows, 80+ system connectors, and a purpose-built Excel Add-in, it simplifies data collection, paving the way for accurate and reliable consolidation. 
 

" Importing data from all source systems is smooth and even the data transformation like all the complex adjustments can be dealt with already available business rules…Read More. – Accounting Manager, Hardware Industry

Keeping the data fit for reporting is essential once all the relevant data is gathered in one place. JustPerform Data Flow Designer revolutionises data management for financial consolidation. It allows users to collect, map and harmonise data, ensuring accuracy while eliminating manual processes. This tool provides a visual, streamlined approach to data preparation, guaranteeing reliable results. 

JustPerform data flow helps users to maintain these varied data sources and provides a broad range of additional data wrangling functionalities like data cleaning and aggregating in one visual experience. It also enables an intuitive way to trace data and smoothly handle audit reviews with robust audit trails.

2. Consolidation

Once all the financial data is gathered from different entities across the organisation, all the complex financial adjustments must be made. Consolidation is merging financial data from various business units into a single comprehensive statement, ensuring accuracy, compliance with standards, and eliminating intercompany transactions.

JustPerform’s Consolidation App comes with a business rule library that automates all the necessary adjustments like journal postings, currency conversions, eliminations (entity to group and vice versa), conterminous adjustments, account reclassifications and more, enabling faster transformation of data for consolidation. Moreover, it allows accountants and finance users to define their custom rules with a no-code approach, bringing speed and accuracy in data transformation.

It also supports multiple consolidation methods like full consolidation or purchase-based consolidation. Organisations can have any number of hierarchies and per cent changes, and the platform will support the same. With a guided and easy-to-update Enterprise Structure, teams can change structures in real-time without worrying about changes thereof. 

JustPerform Consolidation Hub is built to empower finance teams, enabling faster close times and effortless maintenance of enterprise structures and master data. It also provides a highly intuitive user experience, making it easy for users at all levels, from accountants to finance managers, to easily navigate their day-to-day tasks and complete consolidation steps.
 

3. Reporting

After consolidating, the next step is the presentation of the financial data to the stakeholders. Reporting gives a unified view of the financial performance of the organisation.

JustPerform allows financial teams to generate various report types, from group statements like balance sheets, P/L and cash flow statements to drill-down reports, which can be drilled down to a granular level. With JustPerform, you gain access to pre-built audit-friendly reports that are customisable to suit your business consolidation needs.

JustPerform's reporting capability enables the finance team to report and analyse information in a way that makes sense for stakeholders to review performance and make decisions.

Another key aspect in this regard is auditability. The finance team needs the ability to trace the history of each transaction and data edits made in the financial reports. This is very easy, thanks to the fine-grain authorisations feature of JustPerfrom. Moreover, this is a game changer enabling smoother audits.

It goes without saying that all the reports made need to be compliant with international and regional laws. Let’s look into the aspect of compliance now.

4. Compliance 

Compliance with international accounting standards such as IFRS, US GAAP, and Multi-GAAP is one of the important goals of the financial consolidation process. Compliance also fosters trust among stakeholders which increases the credibility of the organisation. Conversely, non-compliance can lead to heavy quantitative and qualitative losses for the organisation.

"US companies have paid 14.2BN$ for non-compliance” 

That said, navigating the ever-changing landscape of statutory requirements can be daunting for finance leaders. Keeping up with each amendment in IFRS and GAAP, and communicating these changes to your team, is a monumental task. But what if there was an easier way?

JustPerform’s Consolidation Pro app has over 100 scenarios based on the latest IFRS and GAAP updates. The IFRS and Multi-GAAP reference models act as a starting point for teams to build their consolidation process digitally.
 

"Our Finance Team struggled a lot for the closure. With the inbuilt Consolidation Package in JustPerform this entire process is made seamless and reduced the Time taken for closure… Read More” – Finance Analyst, Healthcare and Biotech

JustPerform’s IFRS and Multi GAAP modules streamline the whole consolidation process. With comprehensive consolidation scenarios, the need to comply with ever-changing legal requirements is automatically taken care of by the JustPerform Consolidation Pro app. The app also allows for seamlessly adding custom consolidation scenarios unique to your organisation.

Having your consolidation process compliant is a key aspect of having a smooth consolidation.

Conclusion

JustPerform’s Consolidation Hub along with Consolidation app streamlines the consolidation process by simplifying data collection from varied sources, ensuring compliance with IFRS and GAAP standards, and offering automated adjustments for accurate consolidation. It adopts a process-first approach, supporting multiple consolidation methods and providing an intuitive user experience. 
 

Finally, it facilitates efficient reporting, giving a unified view of the organisation’s financial performance. Are you ready to transform your financial consolidation process? Experience the power of modern financial consolidation with JustPerform. Don't let inefficiencies hold you back. Take the simplest, fastest route to full value with JustPerform.