Financial reporting processes can be daunting even for a single-entity business. When you add in subsidiaries, branch locations, franchises or other entities, the complexity of monitoring your organization's financial performance increases exponentially.
That's why, for a multi-entity company, it's imperative to invest in the best financial reporting software, designed to promote efficiency, accuracy and scalability.
Why multi-entity companies need financial reporting software
Companies are increasingly finding the risks of using spreadsheets as their sole financial reporting tools outweigh the merits. There are several benefits that come with adopting dedicated, quality financial reporting software:
Automation and efficiency
Automated data gathering and report generation speed up fiscal reporting processes to meet stakeholders’ expectations for on-demand financial insights. This frees up finance teams to provide analytics-informed perspectives and deeper strategic insights company heads seek.
Financial data accuracy and compliance
When it comes to rote data management processes, removing humans from the equation eliminates human error by default. Automated financial reporting ensure greater accuracy, minimizes discrepancies, and improves adherence to accounting standards such as GAAP and IFRS. This reduces the risk of errors that could trigger audits or penalties from regulatory bodies, giving your team peace of mind while maintaining compliance.
Real-time financial insights
Financial performance can change in an instant based on geopolitical and economic circumstances. With financial reporting software that provides instant access to accurate financial data, your team can quickly pivot in response of emergent challenges. By leveraging up-to-the-moment information, your organization can make data-driven decisions that ensure agility, competitiveness, and resilience in a rapidly changing environment.
Scalability and personalization
While spreadsheets can be limited in their ability to create custom reports, dedicated financial reporting software tools can be tailored to meet the needs of your organization. They also have the ability to readily scale with your company.
Multi-entity and multi-company reporting capabilities
If your organization consists of multiple subsidiaries, branch locations or other independently-run entities, then you need a good financial reporting software designed specifically for multi-entity enterprises.
What is multi-entity/multi-company reporting?
Multi-entity reports differ from traditional financial statements in that they involve slicing and dicing financial data across entities. Not only can you look at the business performance of your organization as a whole or a single entity within it, but you can also compare all or some of your entities side by side with regard to key performance indicators.
Centralized management
While legacy financial reporting software solutions create data silos by storing information for each company in separate databases, creating inefficiency as well as blindspots that lend themselves to financial risk, multi-entity accounting solutions host this data in a single, centralized database. Your organization's finance team can manage financial processes across multiple subsidiaries or business units from one platform, creating a single source of truth for your organization, promoting accuracy and visibility.
Data consolidation and elimination of redundancies
When recording transactions that pertain to more than one entity within your organization, legacy accounting software requires copying and pasting the same information into multiple databases, inviting chances for redundancies and errors. Multi-entity accounting software, however, allows you to manage tasks like inter-company transactions from a single screen, streamlining data management from the outset.
Regulatory compliance across jurisdictions
Multi-entity reporting capabilities strike a balance between independence and oversight. Custom reports can be compiled for each company according to local financial reporting requirements and stakeholder demands. At the same time, your finance team can compile financial statements at the organizational level that adhere to national and global standards such as GAAP or IFRS.
Key features to look for in financial reporting software
You may already know you company needs multi-entity financial reporting solutions, but there are some important distinctions between them. Here are important features to look for when choosing the best financial reporting software.
Easy to personalize dashboards and reports
Not everyone with an interest in your company's financial health will have the same background, and neither will they all be interested in the same business insights. Individualized dashboards and custom financial reports keep every stakeholder engaged.
Cross-platform integration
Information pertaining to everything from payroll to inventory management will find its way into your financial statements, so it’s important to choose financial reporting tools that integrate seamlessly with your current software solutions. Choosing an accounting platform with an open API means you select the applications that work best for your business.
Cost effectiveness
Another benefit of a platform-based financial management solution with an open API is that you aren't paying for capabilities that your team doesn’t need and won’t use. When choosing software solutions, it’s also important to find out whether the “sticker price” includes things like data hosting.
Data security and permissions management
As a finance leader, it's your responsibility to protect client data from outside attackers as well as internal threats. The best financial reporting software has robust security features to protect sensitive financial data. Look for vendors that:
- Require measures such as multi-factor authentication and strong passwords
- Offer security-related resources and ongoing training for users
- Automatically update their software with current security patches and upgrades
- Employ role-based user access, version controls and audit trails to investigate and deter internal mishandling of records or transactions
Responsive customer support
While the right financial reporting solution will benefit your company in the long run, the transition from your current system can pose challenges in the short-term. Every software comes with a learning curve, some steeper than others, and every software switch comes with the need for data migration, which can be tricky if you’re moving from a legacy accounting solution.
When adopting a financial reporting software, ensure there are plans in place to meet these challenges. This might mean working with a consultant as well as directly with the vendor to provide implementation support, data integration assistance, employee training and ongoing, reliable customer support. Even if a financial reporting software has all the key features you’re looking for, be wary if the vendor has a poor customer support track record.
Why businesses trust Gravity Software for financial reporting
Gravity Software is a comprehensive accounting software specifically designed for multi-entity businesses. Built on the Microsoft Power Platform, Gravity offers advanced financial reporting capabilities often seen in large-scale enterprise resource planning systems. Many small- to medium-sized businesses have made the switch from legacy platforms to Gravity Software – and are glad they did!
See how companies like Brandon Capital and Onefire Holding Co. have transformed their financial reporting:
Brandon Capital
Brandon Capital’s single-entity accounting software was holding the private equity firm back. The firm’s team was stuck posting the same journal entries over and over again in different databases, along with inputting countless Excel queries just to produce reports that were relevant to their stakeholders. All this labor expended just to complete basic accounting tasks kept them from providing the data analysis and more strategic insights the organization needed to advance.
Realizing they’d outgrown their current solution, Brandon Capital switched from Xero to Gravity Software. In doing so, they:
- Reduce data entry time by eliminating repetitive journal entries and manual Excel queries
- Streamline financial reporting processes, enabling faster and more accurate insights
- Faster month-end closing times, allowing the team to focus on more meaningful, accurate financial reporting
Onefire Holding Co.
Because of various accounting applications that didn’t communicate with each other, the team at holding company Onefire was understandably frustrated with a financial reporting process that involved the thankless task of aggregating a balance sheet from each of 17 separate entities. After switching to Gravity Software, the nearly monthlong ordeal is now “almost automatic,” according to the organization’s chief operating officer.
Results with Gravity Software:
- Streamlined financial reporting processes with consolidated automated reporting
- Enabled accounting employees to work remotely using Gravity’s cloud-based accounting software
- Freed up valuable time previously spent on manual data aggregation, improving team productivity.
Embrace the future of financial reporting with Gravity Software
Every transaction entered into accounting software is a step toward compiling accurate reports. That’s why a comprehensive accounting solution like Gravity Software, designed especially with multi-entity businesses in mind, is imperative for facilitating every aspect of reporting, eliminating the chaos of month-end closeouts and ensuring stakeholders receive relevant, complete financial data.
With a segmented chart of accounts, users can access financial information for all of a company's entities with a single login, enabling real-time access to organization-wide financial metrics. This makes inter-company transactions and shared vendor payments much easier, as balances are automatically reconciled across locations.
When it’s time to close the books and create consolidated financial reports, it’s as easy as selecting the relevant entities and automatically generating one using multiple dimensions.
See Gravity Software in action and discover why it’s the best financial reporting software for multi-entity businesses. Schedule a demo today.
Gravity Software
Better. Smarter. Accounting.
