Many facets involved in closing the books & provide insights into expediting the process in order to be able to create more timely financial statements.
A common challenges for the controller role is in closing the month-end and period-end books in preparation to issue financial statements. This duty requires precision, timing and efficiency.
The closing process has traditionally been a slow one with many companies taking two weeks to close its subsidiary’s books and another two to three weeks to roll up and consolidated the results. In today’s face paced digital world, much has been done to help accelerate that process with integrated enterprise resource planning systems and general ledger and consolidate software.
Within this session we will discuss the many facets involved in closing the books and provide insights into expediting the process in order to be able to create more timely financial statements. Typical steps in the accounting close process include: o Analysis of business transactions o Make JE’s o Post to Ledger Accounts o Prepare trial balance o Make adjusting entries o Prepare adjusted trial balance o Prepare financial statements o Close accounts o Prepare post-closing trial balance
Within this segment we will discuss the elements of the financial close and also important concepts to assist the controller in accelerating their close timeline. This includes address all functional areas of the close including payroll, invoicing, payables, inventory, cash, and the general ledger. We will also discuss important concepts of ensuring your financial close is accurate by discussing bank reconciliations, overhead allocations, bad debt reserves, unpaid wages and accruals for vacation time, account reconciliations, deprecation and overall financial statement review.
Field of Study: Accounting
Lynn Fountain has over 45 years of experience spanning public accounting, corporate accounting and consulting. 24 years of her experience has been working in the areas of internal and external auditing. She is a subject matter expert in multiple fields including internal audit, ethics, fraud evaluations, Sarbanes-Oxley, enterprise risk management, governance, financial management and compliance. Ms. Fountain has held two Chief Audit Executive positions for international companies. In 2011, as the Chief Audit Executive for an international construction/ engineering firm, she was involved in the active investigation of a joint venture fraud. The investigation included work with the FBI and ultimately led to indictment of the perpetrators and recovery of $13M. Ms. Fountain is currently engaged in her own training and consulting business and is a regular trainer for the AICPA. Ms. Fountain is the author of three separate technical books. “Raise the Red Flag – The Internal Auditors Guide to Fraud Evaluations” was published by the Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation. -“Leading The Internal Audit Function” and -“Ethics and The Internal Auditor Political Dilemma” were published by Taylor & Francis In addition Ms. Fountain was a contributing author to the certification program exam for the National Association of Accountants. She also has certificate programs on various on-line platforms. Ms. Fountain has performed as an adjunct instructor for the School of Business for Grantham University and developed the first internal audit curriculum for the School of Business at the University of Kansas. Ms. Fountain obtained her BSBA from Pittsburg State University and her MBA from Washburn University in Kansas. She has her CGMA, CRMA credentials and CPA certificate (non-active).
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