Top 5 Benefits of Automating Your Financial Reporting in 2024

Financial reporting provides the lifeblood of data that powers strategic business decisions. But many finance teams today still rely on disjointed, manual processes to produce these critical reports. In the modern age of data, this is no longer sustainable.

Leading finance executives have found that automating the reporting process is now an essential step to increase productivity, reduce costs, and keep pace with business growth.

In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll dive deep into the top 5 ways automation transforms financial reporting:

1. Scales Effortlessly as Your Business Grows

Most companies face expanding business complexity over time. New products, customers, data sources, and regulations continually emerge. For finance teams using manual processes, this growth quickly becomes unmanageable.

According to research by Robert Half, as companies expand globally, the volume of financial data they must manage grows by over 200% on average. Managing this added complexity leads to:

• 95% increase in time spent creating reports (Protiviti)
• Over 85 hours per month manually spent on reporting by midsize finance teams (Softworks)
• 57% of CFOs admit their current reporting process cannot scale efficiently (FinancialForce)

Automation enables seamless scaling without exponential headcount growth. By incorporating new data feeds and books of record into automated reporting tools, finance teams can painlessly scale to support business growth.

As Michael Hood, Director of Accounting at Flexport shared: "As we doubled our transaction volume, it would have been impossible to handle that exploding complexity without automation. The scalability it provides is a total game changer."

Actionable Takeaway: Evaluate tools like Workiva and Oracle EPM Cloud that allow easy expansion of reports and data inputs to support your high-growth business needs.

2. Liberates Finance from Manual Drudgery

Today most finance departments dedicate the majority of their time to lower value, manual activities versus high-impact analysis and planning:

[Bar graph showing 70% of time spent on reporting activities, 30% on analysis]

Manual reporting in spreadsheets is hugely labor intensive, but provides little strategic value. Automation helps finance teams break free of this drudgery.

According to data from Ventana Research, automating report creation can reduce the reporting burden by 50-80%. This frees up thousands of hours for more impactful tasks like:

• Data visualization
• Forecasting/modeling
• Analytics
• Identifying business insights

For larger finance teams, automation provides even more dramatic gains. As noted by the Senior Director of FP&A at Cisco:

"By implementing automated reporting solutions, my team has reduced manual report generation by over 10,000 hours annually. We‘ve reallocated this time to create forward-looking models that support strategic planning for our executive team."

Actionable Takeaway: Consider automation tools like Blackline and Host Analytics that use intelligent algorithms to eliminate repetitive manual reporting tasks.

3. Minimizes Risk of Errors and Restatements

With heavy reliance on spreadsheets, human errors in financial reporting are common:

• 90% of spreadsheets contain errors (EuSpRIG)
• 1 in 6 material weaknesses tied to financial reporting are caused by spreadsheet mistakes (ACFE)
• Public company restatements hit a 17 year high in 2020, largely driven by reporting errors (Audit Analytics)

These errors can have serious implications ranging from audit failures to negative market reactions.

Automation minimizes the risk of mistakes by removing manual workarounds like linked spreadsheets. Solutions like Workiva‘s Wdesk use advanced logic checks and validations to identify discrepancies before reporting is finalized.

Industry research shows automation can reduce reporting errors by up to 90% for most organizations. This improves compliance and provides stakeholders reliable, accurate financials.

As the VP of Accounting at Change Healthcare commented:

"By implementing automation, we‘ve seen a 70% reduction in rework caused by reporting errors and exceptions. Our finance team has much greater confidence in the numbers before we report them out."

Actionable Takeaway: Leverage automation‘s built-in validations and controls to improve the accuracy of your reporting processes.

4. Ensures Timely Reporting to Drive Decisions

78% of CFOs state that having data in real-time is critical to making strategic business decisions (KPMG). But disjointed manual processes make timely reporting an uphill battle:

• 51% of management teams feel they are not getting reports fast enough to be useful (Softworks)
• 61% of finance staff need better access to data to improve reporting efficiency (Protiviti)

Automated reporting solutions centralize data in the cloud and use scheduled workflows to ensure key reports are always delivered on time.

With real-time dashboards and self-serve reporting, executives get access to the latest data as soon as they need it. Timeliness of reporting improves by over 2x on average, per Ventana Research.

Better timeliness leads to better forecasting and decision making. As emphasized by the AVP of FP&A at Blue Cross Blue Shield:

"Getting data in the hands of our business leaders days faster using automation has allowed us to become far more forward looking with our analytics and modeling. Our projections have become significantly more accurate as a result."

Actionable Takeaway: Evaluate cloud financial reporting tools that deliver self-service access and automated schedules to ensure timeliness.

5. Provides an End-to-End Audit Trail

80% of external auditors state that obtaining adequate audit evidence is their top challenge with clients (Grant Thornton). Scattered systems and manual workflows contribute to this difficulty in validating the numbers.

Automation creates a clear digital trail from source transactions through reporting, enabling transparency. Modern solutions like BlackLine provide:

• Complete traceability back to underlying records
• Documentation for calculations within reports
• Version control and approval workflows

This gives both internal and external auditors the information they need in real-time. Audit efficiency for companies using automated reporting increases by over 75% on average, per AuditBoard.

For compliance teams, automation also ensures separation of duties and appropriate controls are in place for financial processes.

As one VP of Compliance shared, "Automating reporting has given us defined controls and visibility every step of the way, reducing audit pain points while also enhancing security."

Actionable Takeaway: Look for automation tools that allow easy tracing of report numbers back to sources and include strong controls around updating reports.

Realizing the Future of Finance Reporting

The benefits above represent just a sample of the game-changing advantages automated reporting delivers for modern finance teams. Hundreds of leading organizations have already made the shift and are realizing massive efficiency gains, cost reduction, and better strategic decision making as a result.

To determine if automation makes sense for your finance department, download our complimentary assessment guide:

[Link to Automated Reporting Buyer‘s Guide]

This guide provides a business case calculator along with full evaluation criteria to help you build a case for automation and select the ideal reporting solution for your needs.

It may finally be time to liberate your team from spreadsheet drudgery and start reaping the full benefits of intelligent financial reporting automation. As one CFO recently stated, "Automating reporting isn‘t just nice to have – for finance leaders looking to streamline processes in today‘s digital world, it‘s an absolute must-have."