Speeding Up Month-End Close with Process Runner GLSU

The month-end close process is an albatross around the neck of many financial professionals. For those working at smaller companies, it’s not that heavy a burden to bear. But as your company grows so does the time and energy spent herding cats to get accurate data back into your SAP ERP on a monthly basis.

Data management and upload is just one part of the month-end close process, but it’s also the easiest to overcome with automation. Pushing data from static spreadsheets into SAP is sometimes like squeezing a square peg into a round hole. You need to chase people for the data, then ensure it is accurate, before loading it into the system, only to find it riddled with discrepancies. You’ve approached your IT team for an in-house solution to be built, but they don’t have time and your request is left sitting at the bottom of their priority list.

Automating Data Management for Month-End Close is an Easy Decision

For finance professionals, working with SAP’s complex interface and migration processes slows them down, miring them in tedious manual tasks, which can prolong time-critical activities, like month-end close. They may spend hours rekeying general ledger entries and processing large files. They may even struggle to validate data before uploading it to SAP.

Think about the number of hours this work takes and how that time could be better spent on activities that really add value to your business. When you add the time cost and opportunity cost, it’s staggering that many businesses using SAP still persevere with their manual data management processes.

There are three stubborn roadblocks your team likely encounters with manual data management processes around month-end close:

• Cumbersome Procedures — Long and tedious month-end process, hampered by poor integration between databases and SAP, and complex large-file uploads.
• Data Inaccuracy — Manual data entry can cause multiple errors and it is difficult to validate data integrity before posting to SAP.
• IT Dependency — Significant reliance on IT to execute SAP transactions and everyday finance tasks.

Having an automation tool that works within Microsoft Excel — the finance team’s tool of choice — will empower your accounting and finance team, simplifying and automating large data uploads plague your month-end close.

This is where Process Runner GLSU can remove the roadblocks your team wants to avoid.

Satisfying Your Team’s Need for Speed

Reconciling accounts across multiple systems typically requires a manual comparison of balances from different systems, but Process Runner GLSU puts an end to that. Consider an automated data upload solution if you find yourself asking questions like:

Does WIP tie to the General Ledger balance in the ERP system?

Do monthly cash receipts and net change in receivables tie to the income statement?

Month-end close tasks typically require a long checklist of such validations. Your team needs automated data management that turns Microsoft Excel into your data management cockpit for SAP. They need powerful data management, and flexible workflow features that make working in any business process faster and easier. An integrated view of disparate systems can support this “management by exception” approach, substantially increasing efficiency and accuracy.

Open the Door to A Faster, Automated Close

Process Runner GLSU provides a flexible, intuitive interface for SAP data entry and transaction posting directly from Microsoft Excel. Built by finance professionals for finance professionals, Process Runner GLSU streamlines data management operations like month-end close. With it, your team can automate more than 40 SAP FI transactions with support for large journal entries (>1,000 lines), payroll, purchase orders, P-Card, invoices, multiple currencies and cross-company entries.

Empower your finance team to leverage their existing Excel skills to streamline data entry to drive efficiencies in your month-end process.

Automate financial document posting processes resulting in a shorter month-end close.

Pre-validate data prior to posting to SAP, returning any errors in a single report for easy reconciliation.

Increase data accuracy and improve audit processing while running a stress-free finance operation.

Your team will enjoy these GLSU benefits:

• A productivity boost — Create new template in 60 seconds and post more than 999 line items.
• Enterprise-wide impact — Reduce support and ongoing development costs.
• How easy it is to use — Use standard Excel functionality to calculate values and validate in one click.
• The time-to-value acceleration — Quick installation. Increase speed to market with faster data migration, easier data transformation.