Financial data - Timely, Accurate & Complete - does it help during COVID times.

How comfortable to you feel deciding on behave of other people when the data you have is NOT Timely, Not Accurate and NOT Complete. As financial you are responsible to provide the company with the best data you can, to make the best decisions possible.

So what does Timely mean? Reporting is often presented at a fixed time like a heartbeat. Can be your daily report, weekly, monthly or annual. What if specific data is not added in TIME before the report goes out. It could lead to wrong conclusions. You could have delayed the reporting, which would break the heartbeat of the organisation, or you can add estimates that you later can correct. Going forward you need to build resiliency in your data streams that always gives you data in time. Creating a very stable heartbeat.

Accurate reporting means that data that is added is checked and validated if it is accurate. Easy controls can be added based on past data to determine if there are any deviations from trends. Also, think about having random checks across the board, not online high ticket value, to see how accurate data is.

Complete. As the number of data elements keep on growing, it becomes harder and harder to determine if data is complete. Take the time with your teams to determine what complete looks like in a perfect world and build your controls around it. You will be surprised about how often you will find missing gaps in your data.

The last point, create a dashboard with the financial team and measure how often you are successful with Timely, Accurate and Complete. The idea is to make progress, so every day, every week, etc a step forward. Have better data available for you and your company to make decisions. Super motivational for the team to see that all the effort they make is creating better data for the organisation.

Have a great day and I am looking forward to your ideas on how to make your financial reporting more Timely, Accurate and Complete.