What’s broken in the month-end close?
GL mismatches & reconciliation gaps
Even after two decades of ERP upgrades, sub-ledger data still lands in the general ledger out of sync. APQC found that nearly 50% of finance teams need a week or more to clean up reconciliation issues.
Data scattered across Excel, email & screenshots
Knowledge workers spend 1.8 hours every day hunting for information—a quarter of their workweek (McKinsey, 2023).
Manual copy-paste → errors & no audit trail
Hand-keying JE snippets (and the inevitable “v42-final-final.xlsx”) leaves no immutable history. Auditors must recreate intent from Slack messages—hardly a control.
RPA patches, not cures
Triggering UI bots to move numbers from Sheet A to ERP B may feel like progress, but when source layouts or APIs change, bots break. Clients in logistics and utilities replaced brittle bots with Transformance hubs and now save 100+ hours a month on close tasks.
The financial cost of delays in month-end close
Hundreds of hours per cycle
Across the Fortune 2000, controllers report 20–50 staff-hours per month spent solely on reconciliations.
Misstatements and compliance risk
Late or inaccurate accruals distort EBITDA, spook investors, and trigger SEC comment letters. EY’s record-to-report benchmarks note that organisations with manual closes experience 2–3x higher audit adjustments (EY, 2023).
Missed visibility for CFOs
If Flash P&L arrives five days late, strategic course-corrections slip an entire quarter. McKinsey estimates that faster information flow delivers up to 25% productivity gains in knowledge work.
Audit fatigue & year-end backlog
Teams that crawl through monthly closes often roll unresolved items into Q4, ballooning year-end workload and audit fees.
How AI-native finance apps accelerate close
Auto-reconciliation across every source
AI models compare sub-ledger, ERP, and Excel data at line-item level, flagging only true breakpoints. A Transformance accruals hub built for an energy utility eliminated 95% of manual journal uploads and freed 80 hours per month.
Exception workflows with real-time approvals
Instead of emailing screenshots, reviewers click into a live worklist, add comments, and approve fixes in seconds.
Immutable audit trail
Every change—value, user, timestamp—writes to a ledger, satisfying both SOX and external auditors without screen captures.
Orchestrated activities
Built-in “owner → due-date → status” views replace whiteboards and Teams reminders, so managers see bottlenecks before they explode.
Integrate all systems
Transformance integrates with legacy systems of records like ERPs, CRMs, etc., and financial files to provide a unified close process. This capability enables seamless data ingestion across fragmented systems - removing reconciliation bottlenecks and increasing confidence in every adjustment.
Case in point: Intercompany reconciliations
Common failure points
FX re-measurement, timing lags, and transfer-price mismatches plague multi-entity groups. Controllers often resort to “email ping-pong” and late-night calls.
Flow-based resolution
Transformance replaced 200+ email threads per month with a guided flow: entity A proposes, entity B confirms, system posts. Net result: 120 hours saved monthly for a global beer producer’s finance team.
Confidence in consolidation
With reconciled balances locked before the group-level close, CFOs trust the numbers and analysts stop questioning eliminations.
What to look for in a close solution
The broader finance technology landscape is moving toward composable services—modular tools that plug into existing ERPs without requiring heavy IT investment. Transformance is purpose-built to lead this shift, delivering ERP-connected orchestration without the cost and complexity of platform overhauls.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average time to complete month-end close in large enterprises?
APQC places the median at 6.4 calendar days, with top performers hitting 4–5 days.
Why do most RPA-based solutions still require human rework?
Bots mimic keystrokes. Change a column header or screen layout and they throw an exception that humans must patch. AI-native apps understand the data, not the pixels. RPAs often break - at a large Agriculture company as much as once a month as cloud software updated. API and AI native solutions are more robust.
Can intercompany reconciliation be automated?
Yes. Rule-based matching plus AI-driven FX detection can auto-clear up to 90% of transactions, as seen in Transformance deployments saving 120+ hours/month.
How does Transformance differ from legacy close tools?
Legacy tools require heavy IT lift and separate data stores. Transformance is AI-native, ERP-connected, and deploys in weeks - not quarters. Get a live demo to learn more.
What’s the fastest way to pilot a new finance app?
Book a sandbox session - most customers stand up a limited-scope close hub in two weeks via our Request Demo program.
Ready to fix your month end close with AI apps?
Stop copy-pasting and start analysing. See Transformance in action—schedule your personalised demo today.
➞ Request a demo
Explore more on the Transformance blog, or dive into our features overview to see how AI orchestration powers finance beyond close.
