By Philip Boken and Gary Callaghan, Protiviti
Management, regulators and investors demand better information faster, which adds pressure to already compressed timelines for closing the books. One obstacle standing in the path of financial close-process efficiency and effectiveness is the volume and complexity of manual journal entries. While there will always be a need for manual journal entries in the close process, opportunities for improvement can be found in reducing the volume of entries, increasing standardization and automating certain types of transactions.