Complex ownership structures, data from disparate sources across multiple entities, intercompany transactions, and currency translations—every step in a financial consolidation can be a hurdle that adds errors, burns time, and delays the transition to the next phase: financial reporting.
Reporting, already burdened with data quality concerns, complex accounting standards, and tight deadlines, often falls short of the accuracy and insight stakeholders need.
Financial consolidation and reporting have stood out for decades as significant accounting challenges, particularly for multi-location businesses. Fortunately, with the advent of AI, financial consolidation and reporting are set for a massive transformation, and let us find out how:
AI for Financial Consolidation
Financial consolidation involves many moving, interconnected parts that need to work seamlessly together. While standard automation tools help with some tasks, only AI-powered accounting can tackle every challenge, fully automating and transforming the entire process.
Here’s how AI-driven tools streamline each step, solving common hurdles and redefining how financial consolidation is done today:
Data Collection
Today’s AI tools can rapidly collect, absorb, and process data directly from multiple data formats. They don’t stop at data entry automation. AI tools are self-learning and can accurately validate, segregate, standardize, categorize, and match extracted data in real-time, saving time for financial teams.
Consolidations
AI’s real-time data extraction and validation completely solves the daunting task of handling intercompany settlements.
With AI, Intercompany eliminations, settlements, currency conversions, and interest calculations are seamlessly automated. Anomalies, redundancies, and discrepancies in this workflow are automatically detected for error-free financial reconciliations.
Compliance & Audit Trails with Zero Manual Intervention
AI tools log every data upload, modification, elimination, and approval, creating a solid, consistent audit trail that keeps your staff stress-free during audits.
They also eliminate compliance issues by automatically mapping financials to regulatory standards like GAAP, IFRS, and SOX. With AI, your accounting staff can solve compliance and audit trail issues once and for all without any intervention.
Learn how Docyt seamlessly handles inter-store settlements, consolidation, and reconciliation for franchise businesses here.
AI for Financial Reporting
AI accounting tools are today’s go-to financial performance management systems, cutting the consolidation process time by 10X, no matter the size of your business. But the real magic happens with AI’s analytics capabilities. It truly shines in reporting, delivering on-the-go insights with real-time reporting and interactive dashboards that keep you ahead of the game. Here’s how:
Automated Report Generation
AI removes the need to manually compile data, struggle with spreadsheets, or wait until month-end to access reports. With real-time financial reporting, AI tools can quickly identify trends, detect anomalies, track key business metrics, and drill down into granular details to help you make informed business decisions efficiently.
Real-Time Dashboards for Financial Insights
AI tools make live accounting dashboards possible, offering instant recognition to give you a complete snapshot of your business’s financial health at any time.
These dashboards provide access to live insights and enable you to monitor and share relevant KPIs and metrics across different departments. On a single dashboard, one can now view the complete financial performance of your entire business portfolio with ease.
Explore how Docyt’s InsightFlow extends these capabilities with its industry-specific unit economics and live departmental reports on our real-time financial reporting platform.
AI Chatbots & Virtual Accounting Assistants
While AI democratizes the power of intelligent automation, AI chatbots and virtual assistants today make it possible for anyone to leverage AI’s potential.
Powered by Natural Language Processing, AI virtual assistants handle complex, real-time queries, provide results in seconds, and work as your accounting staff to get things done. And the best part? These virtual helpers are always on the job, offering real-time support 24/7 to ensure you get an exceptional user experience whenever you need it.
Learn how Docyt’s GARY was integrated into our client’s business to cut down the month-end closing process from 15 days to 45 minutes.
AI for Consolidation & Reporting: The Way Forward
AI is all set to completely transform how financial reporting is done and how insights are generated. With instant report generation, live dashboards, and AI assistants delivering information in real-time, AI is already reshaping financial reporting. As for financial consolidation, it is a landscape that stands to transform the most from the proliferation of AI.
Teams handling financial consolidation no longer need to spend days compiling, adjusting, and reconciling complex data or piecing together reports. AI tools now automate financial consolidation, significantly reducing time while improving efficiency and accuracy.
As a result, accounting consolidation teams evolve into consolidation analysts who work alongside AI to streamline workflows, interpret data, and make informed decisions.
That said, businesses today are already leveraging AI-powered consolidation and reporting tools to save time, boost efficiency, and extract maximum value from insights for strategic planning and decision-making. If you’re looking to do the same, try Docyt and see the difference for yourself.
