The far-reaching benefits of subledger systems

Numbers on spreadsheets? Accounting today faces much more rigorous demands. Financial corporations need systems that reliably provide accurate information, adhere to the highest standards of control, fulfil a range of legal and management reporting requirements – and do it all with the utmost transparency. Yes, finance has a heavy load to lift. Is your organisation unlocking the benefits of subledger accounting yet? You’ll find it’s a case of many birds; one stone. 

The problem?

So where can things go wrong and why is reconciliation often a tedious process? The culprit: Multiple heterogeneous systems feeding data into settlement systems and the general ledger. These require expensive customisation to connect transactional systems to the general ledger. Data is also incongruous and requires cleaning up, which is often a slow, manual process resulting in breaks in data flow, slower processing and potential errors. And if you’ve ever experienced journal entries recorded to the wrong account, you’ll know the headache of reconciliation.

An ideal solution?

A subsidiary ledger or subledger stores specific types of accounting transactions which are then summarised and posted to the general ledger. Subledger solutions offer far-reaching benefits:

• Saved time and reduced costs: Lower implementation and maintenance costs by eliminating the need for expensive customisations. Stop wasting staff and money time on reconciliation and tedious manual tasks – data and any changes are auto-filtered down the line.
• Data integrity: Keep your general ledger free from ‘bad’ data with data that’s accurate and uniform across the chain.
• Transparency and compliance: Enable easy reconciliation and compliance with a full-drilldown to clear, auditable entries. Administer multiple accounting policies for greater internal control.
• Accessibility: Continuously and quickly provide key financial information crucial to important business decisions and regulators.

In order to be useful to the organisation, data has to be valid and accessible for analysis and interpretation. A reliable subledger system is invaluable in ensuring both data quality and consistency across the board – in short, there’s no reason why compliance and reconciliation headaches can’t be a ‘pain’ of the past.

For greater efficiency across the organisation, find out about the latest Hotsourcing industry trend. It encourages businesses to achieve the ideal mix of in-house and outsourced resources. See my earlier blog.