Tax Director
If you are responsible for the tax department at your company, you realize that the tax provision is an important activity which has to be completed each year. If the financial close is financial reporting’s “last mile,” then tax provisions are generally the final hurdle of that “last mile.” The tax provision is dependent on many processes which precede it and there is tremendous pressure on tax teams to prepare an accurate tax provision based on these processes. The tax provision is also among the final entries recorded in a period. Often this information is modified and re-modified by finance teams with little communication or consideration of the impact on tax provision preparers. What if there was a tool that could…
- help you manage the entire process?
- give you increased visibility into the process?
- help you make the most use of the resources at your disposal?
- help you identify risks in the provision, and address them early?
- give you instant access to all supporting documents?
- improve communications between all participants (finance team, tax team, outside advisors)?
- show you the status of every activity (including review and analysis) needed to complete a more accurate close?
- help you to be sure that the close is 100% complete?
The Accelerated Financial Reporting Management Solution from Hyland Software can help you to do all these things you know would be great, if only there was the time and way.
Manage the Entire Process.
AFRM® gives you a real time view of every activity in the tax process at any time.
Using AFRM® you can quickly identify bottlenecks and risk exposures. With AFRM® you can see when tasks, or specific people are falling behind or are in danger of falling behind. Often time this is the result of dependencies, but sometimes this is due to other priorities or lack of attention to the required activity. Visibility into the process allows you to address these issues as they arise, as opposed to the alternative which could result in late work or missing a required deadline. Whether you need to load balance, send reminders, or simply respond to changing conditions, AFRM® helps you manage the whole process more effectively.
Make the most efficient use of your department and extended team.
Every tax provision is different. A task performed by an outside preparer or co-sourced might be re-assigned or prepared in-house. Additional activities might arise from new tax regulations, change in business operations or new locations which become taxable. AFRM® gives you the tools to create activities that address these areas, monitor the workload for every member of the process, and keep that process on track. Since the preparer is presented with desk-level procedures, prior supporting documents, and approved templates when they begin work on each task, you can have complete confidence that every task will be completed as requested and remain consistent with prior periods.
Identify risks in the provision and address them early.
Most of the time it isn’t the big issues that trip you up. It can be a small item early in the provision cycle, or a delay in reviewing an early analysis or document that means that a mistake is not caught until later, forcing rework on dependent steps. AFRM® helps you to identify these risk areas early and put out the fires while they are still small.
Instant access to all supporting documents.
No more searching through binders and file shares to find a supporting document. The foundation of AFRM® is OnBase, Hyland Software’s award winning Enterprise Content Management Solution. Open an activity and all the supporting documents, from this period and from all previous periods, are there at your fingertips. Tax provisions, tax returns, estimated payments and correspondence are all stored in a single solution which is accessible to any approved user with an internet connection.
Ensure SoX compliance.
SoX control activities are documented and completed each cycle. Evidence of review and completion of tasks is automatically captured within AFRM® providing complete evidence to both internal and external SoX auditors. No longer will e-mail or calendars be the primary support for your SoX procedures.