Manual JEs, Risk, and IFRS?

Over the last 10 to 15 years, the degree of automation in financial processes has advanced dramatically. And while most companies continue to strive to develop and implement even more automation into their transaction processing and financial closing and reporting processes, there is little doubt that the manual journal entry is going to continue to be a key component in the financial closing and reporting process for the foreseeable future.

This statement is based on my own admittedly non-cientific survey of leading financial personnel who are in my professional network. These people have roles such as CFO, chief internal audit executive, deputy comptroller, SOX team leader, and even partner with a national CPA firm. They work in a wide variety of industries, including manufacturing, medical products and services, telecommunications, state government, and energy, in addition to public accounting.

Since I am working on an article about risk and the manual journal entry process, I have been holding various types of discussions (phone and e-mail) with these outstanding accountants and financial professionals. One of them brought up an intriguing thought about the future importance of the manual journal entry process, given pending changes in accounting standards. (more…)