Closing the books is a monthly, quarterly or annual activity that is always carried out by the finance team. At the beginning of each period, the finance team will collect all financial records from the previous period to reconcile and consolidate them and generate financial reports for that period. Financial statements are crucial to assess how a business performs. This can be the foundation to help make company decisions that will determine the continuity of a company.
According to Kasmir in his book entitled Analysis of Financial Statements (2008), the definition of financial statements is a summary of a recording process, which collects all the transactions that occurred during the related financial year.
Generally, financial reports are made by accountants in a company or an organization, as a form of accountability report to the management. This reports all of the financial transactions that has happened during a certain time period.
An ideal financial report consists of a balance sheet, income statement, statement of changes in equity, statement of financial position, notes and other reports and explanatory material which are an integral part of the financial statements.
The functions of each supporting elements above are:
The purpose of financial reports is to provide information about the company's financial condition, performance and cash flow that is useful to make economic decisions. It also reports responsible management's use of the resources entrusted to them (Fahmi in his book Financial statements Analysis).
In detail, the objectives of the financial statements include (Kasmir – 2016):
Given the importance of a financial report for business, companies usually use accounting softwares to help manage their financial reports easier and faster. Accounting softwares also helps finance teams to track the company’s income and expenses. Here are some accounting softwares that are widely used by companies and their reviews.
Oracle Netsuite
Oracle Netsuite is ERP software with cloud technology to measure your financial processes while your business is growing. The service offered is not limited to financial management, but extends to other levels such as supply chain management, procurement, production management, and warehouse fulfillment.
Odoo
Odoo offers free software, including free hosting and assistance. They emphasize that you only have to pay when you install other supporting applications. They also offer flexible integration between invoicing and online payments, so that it automatically syncs with Bank Feed. Other advantages are:
Jurnal
This accounting software from Mekari provides service that can be updated in real-time, instant calculations, and provides many report templates that can be selected and modified as needed. Here are the specifications:
Ecount
Eccount provides collaboration features for accounting programs that consists of a Profit and Loss Report to a Balance Sheet to show the overall status of funds and sales. With Ecount you can manage and allocate budgets for each period or department. In addition, other features include:
Kledo
Kledo is an accounting software that fulfills all business needs, from recording company income expenses, accounts payable & receivables, purchasing, sales quotes, invoices to reconciliation with national banking mutation data. All of this is available for free. Kledo's service includes:
If your company is already using softwares to help compile financial reports, it's time to improve and optimize the company's financial processes for maximum effectiveness! We know that processing and recording manual transactions consumes a lot of time and is prone to human error. Especially repetitive data-entry activities. The time and cost required to fix these errors is considerable.
It’s time to integrate your business bookkeeping software with Aspire all-in-one financial platform. All financial transactions can be carried out through Aspire platform and are automatically recorded in your accounting software. You can also automatically categorize entries by vendor, purchasing team, and more, for automatic data-entry, even up until automatically deducting taxes based on transaction type.
Aspire also provides payables, receivables, and claim management, with approval systems to streamline all your business finance operations. Of course, now you can also access financial reports and see your company’s current financial status anytime and anywhere, without having to wait until the end of the month.
Find out more about Aspire or talk to our team to find out how Aspire can simplify all your business finance and accounting processes. Make sure your company can pick the right strategic decisions based on thorough and up-to-date data!