High-level business decision makers rely on rigorous financial reporting to make decisions about future spending practices. Timely and accurate financial reports enable companies to track their profits and expenses, which should allow companies the ability to project down the road.
When organizations are still in their formative stages, many accounting and financial roles – from accounting to strategic planning – are performed in a piecemeal fashion. It works as long as the company remains small and a few key individuals are able to grasp in one view all of the vital information necessary to maintain accurate financial records.
But, when organizations expand they need to find a better way to process financial information. While some financial professionals think that automated systems expedite the process and ensure more accuracy, others are reluctant to further erode the role of human judgement in accounting .
“Financial reporting will never be fully automated,” CPA firm founder Gabe Zubizarreta told CFO.com earlier this week. “Say you tell a salesman he’s going to get a quarterly bonus if he sells X units. By the second month, he’s halfway there. Should you record that bonus for the quarter? There’s no right accounting answer. Maybe recording that puts you a little below your profit estimate so you don’t record it. Maybe you do. It takes human judgment. You can’t automate that.”
Ultimately, a company’s decision to rely on automated accounting practices depends on the size of the company and the specific practices it engages in. More complicated business transactions could require automated processes, regardless of how hesitant decision makers may be to implement such practices.
A business intelligence analyst can help CFOs and other C-level decision makers identify and retrieve critical financial information. To find the right business intelligence analysts many CFOs and accounting professionals turn to executive recruiters to access their networks and to assess candidates for key roles.
