Analysis Can Shed Light on Extra Financial Reporting Costs

The level of cost-creep (the gradual build-up over time in the cost/revenue ratio) in enterprise accounting and financial reporting is hard to tolerate for CFOs and controllers today. Whether you’re working on the monthly close or the quarterly release of performance results to shareholders, efficiency is paramount. Then again, so are speed and the need to orchestrate all the steps of financial reporting in a well-synchronized manner. Add the need for greater transparency on data sources and accounting controls and it’s easy to see why core financial processes like financial reporting deserve regular measurement across dimensions like cost, speed, and accuracy. In this article, APQC reviews cross-industry data on the cost of financial reporting and provides some considerations that can help organizations improve their performance on this measure.