Important Issues That Epicor Financial Planner Can Help Address in Financial Reporting 

Working in finance can be exciting and rewarding, but it has its share problems. Although most businesses recognize the importance of data integrity and accuracy, they also face a mounting challenge in managing their financial data's increasing volume and complexity. Instead of just working more, today’s finance professionals need to find a way to work smarter by using the best financial reporting software and technology available to get the task done quickly, effectively, and precisely.  

The three most challenging aspects of financial reporting are discussed in this article. You'll get insight into how top finance departments leverage technology to boost efficiency in report generation, reduce reliance on time-consuming manual processes, provide instant access to crucial business data for executives, and inspire trust among the company's many stakeholders.  

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Problem 1. ERP Complexity Challenges  

An integral part of the accounting process is handled by enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. For many businesses, the General Ledger, Accounts Payable, and Accounts Receivable were once the primary ERP system focuses. The functional challenges of accounting and ERP software has increased as computing technology became pervasive. Inventory, MRP, project, and CRM systems are increasingly integrated with or built on top of current enterprise resource planning systems (CRM). 

While this is great news for SMBs, it also poses new difficulties due to the intricate nature of the underlying data. Managing this complexity can be difficult when reports are kept within a single ERP system. As the software's capabilities grow, more and more data must be kept in the database. Many of these systems now include thousands of tables and going through all this data while compiling it and making it accessible poses a significant challenge.  

Most database layouts can be more user-friendly. However, those same business users need to get at the data locked up in their ERP system. The good news is that this issue can be fixed. The most excellent reporting tools have been developed to make complex database tables and field understandable to the average business user. This acts as a translation layer, simplifying the process of navigating complex ERP data and allowing for the generation of ad hoc reports on an almost as-needed basis.  

How Epicor Financial Planner (EFP) Can Help: EFP is a business finance reporting software that can easily integrate with ERP on-premises. It gives users the ability to pull data directly from ERP systems into EFP, allowing the data to be easily viewed and managed with a complete drill down to the GL database. This makes accessing data convenient for a variety of users and business stakeholders.  

Problem 2. Manual, slow processes  

Another common problem is that many ERP systems do not have a powerful in-built reporting function. The reporting tools that come with most enterprise software are somewhat rigid, difficult to learn, or both. As a result, many finance teams resort to a time-consuming workaround — they export data from their ERP software and upload it into a spreadsheet tool, where they can alter, filter, and format it to their specifications.  

It's a waste of time and effort to export data to spreadsheets, format it, and prepare it manually. The time it takes to transfer data from one location to another is time that could be spent doing something more productive.  

These manual techniques also tend to add inaccuracies to the data. When you copy and paste information into an existing spreadsheet, adding one extra row, for example, may cause current calculations to be erroneous. If you can't detect the problem until later, wrong information may be communicated to stakeholders in your organization. This weakens trust in the financial team's capacity to deliver reliable reports, which can lead to poor business decisions.  

Another issue with manual processes is that the generated reports only provide a snapshot in time. Data becomes obsolete as soon as it is exported from your ERP software or other business platforms. Your report will only reflect new transactions if you repeat exporting, copying, and pasting data.  

How Epicor Financial Planner (EFP) Can Help:  The solution to this problem is a financial reporting software that automatically accesses the source data in your ERP system, preferably in real time. Your finance staff can get accurate, up-to-date reports anytime without requiring manual processes. This saves time and allows your team members to focus on higher-value activities.   

Epicor Financial Planner (EFP) has upgraded Consolidation Capabilities which improves speed, promotes more straightforward configuration, a more flexible currency handling and revaluation, enhanced reclassification, top-side journal entries, and more. EFP also comes with ready-to-use templates for financial reporting so finance teams can easily create reports from scratch.  

If you’d like a chance to explore EFP for yourself and learn more about how it can fit your business needs, get in touch with one of our consultants today and we’d be happy to schedule a free demo session for you.