Gartner Research

How to Increase Accounting Team Analytics During the Quarter Close

Published: 03 May 2023

Summary

Accountants spend excessive time on routine transactional work, missing occasions to provide balance-sheet-focused insights. Corporate controllers can enable earlier detection of errors and help the team perform judgment-based work by targeting opportunities for analysis throughout the quarter.

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Overview

Key Findings
  • Corporate controllers are dissatisfied with the analysis done during the close and the support provided to stakeholders throughout the quarter. Accounting departments miss opportunities to use the data from consolidation and financial reporting work, resulting in lost savings.

  • Accounting teams plan to increase capacity for analytics by automating routine, manual tasks in the record-to-report (R2R) process. But accountants need guidance on where to focus additional efforts to spot and resolve hidden errors and improve close accuracy and reporting utility.

  • Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) teams are not solely responsible for providing analytics, and, in many cases, accounting staff are best

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Analysts:

Hilary Richards

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