Beyond the Close: Daily Answers for Leadership Teams

A Chain Reaction of Finance Challenges

Finance came to me once with a problem. ‘It is taking a long time to validate our orders, this is impacting our closing, can you do anything?

Out came the toolbox and I rewrote the validation program. What was a great program, needed a bit of a refresh. I was able to use a combination of experience and new methods to shave about 24 Hours of the closing.

On presenting this to Finance, ‘that’s great but we have another problem’.

On looking at it, by closing AR a day earlier, it was now concurrent with AP. Both were now trying to import journals at the same time!

This taught me a couple of valuable lessons, always look for ways to improve and just because you’ve solved one there is always the next.

The majority of the month is spent on day-to-day activities. What should I be looking at for tools to both help with the close and what helps with the day job?

From Month-End to Every Day: What Finance Really Needs

You know your challenges, for me it is just about accurate numbers in a timely fashion.

To save time mostly I want to be able to automate but sometimes I need ad hoc capabilities. I want to login quickly, enter the minimal information and get the results quickly.

Subsequently I want to be able to compare numbers to a previous month and/or budget. I want to be able to drill into those numbers and compare the balance from the General Ledger with the subledgers.

The next thing I want is to be able to see is the supplier/customer and transaction number.

Having done that, I want to be able to refresh as new journals have been entered.

Introducing the Balance Inquiry: Your Financial Microscope

With GL Connect I regularly build financial statements. In addition to being able to produce a Balance Sheet, Income Statement or Cash Flow forecast; I can also do ad hoc inquiries.

For this we have the Balance Inquiry:

There are several advantages to this:

• I can use a parent account, in this case my total revenue.
• I can enter a range of accounts.
• I do not need to enter all segments.
• I can compare month to month.
• I can compare to my budget and show the variance.
• If I want to check another account, I can enter just one account and the screen will refresh.
• If new journals have been entered, I can press refresh.
• A balance inquiry is available for EBS and Fusion.
• The balances are drillable!
• It is in Excel.

The balance inquiry is a great part of GL Connect. It is built using the same balance formulas as for building a financial statement. It is a great for cross checking the numbers on your Financial Statement.

Let’s Build a Smarter Close

One of the first things I was taught was keep it simple. The more things I click, the less time I have. GL Connect’s main feature is to get a balance.

For this we provide a simple screen to enter your ledger, period, currency and an account. From this you can get a balance,

To make things easier these can be linked to cells on the workbook. This shows an example:

If I get one formula right, I can then use the power of Excel to flash fill and copy paste. In a few minutes I can build a report.

Having put in the effort I do not want to run it repeatedly.

Here we provide genuine automation using our Burst and Distribution feature. In a few clicks I can efficiently send out reports to all your companies or department heads.

We can create distribution templates with the details of who to send the report to. We can then schedule the report using advanced scheduling to pick days that align with your calendar.

At its heart GL Connect combines with the SplashBI platform to be able to take the load from the laptop.

This frees you up to do other things.

The Bigger Picture: Why GL Connect Goes Beyond the Basics?

We have seen some great features of GL Connect to help you in your day-to-day activities. But there is so much more:

• It works for Oracle EBS and Oracle Fusion ERP
• We inherit Oracle role-based access, security roles, balancing segment security, ledger sets for the Oracle Fusion ERP
• Oracle EBS responsibilities, ledger sets, flexfield security
• Supports real-time for EBS and near real-time for the Oracle Fusion ERP
• It is optimized for large data pulls
• Drilldown to detailed balances, journals, subledger details or transaction detail
• Perform reconciliations, inquiries and perform validations directly in Excel
• Compare actuals to budgets or prior periods

All of this is delivered through a single plugin. GL Connect has been continuously improved over the years, backed by real-world usage across a broad client base including one customer who has downloaded over two billion rows since inception. We’ve adapted seamlessly to the Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP environment, and we actively incorporate customer feedback and industry best practices to enhance the user experience. Looking ahead, we’re developing AI-powered capabilities that go beyond flashy buttons focused instead on delivering meaningful business value. These innovations are already visible across our product line and will soon be part of GL Connect as well. The product keeps evolving, and honestly, I wish I had it in my toolbox all those years ago.