How To Implement Quick Month-end Reporting – by day 3 or less!


Organisations around the world are spending far too much time on month-end reporting where the real decision based reports are those issued daily and weekly.  In other words telling management the horse has bolted after month-end is too late.  David Parmenter has presented this white paper successfully to audiences in Australia, Ireland, England and New Zealand to over 2,000 attendees.  It has had a profound impact across all sectors. If your month-end is slow this is a must attend white paper.David states he has yet to find an organisation that can not get down to day 3 reporting if they apply his methodology developed from the better practices of hundreds of fast reporting organisations.David will explain that month end reporting by day one is being achieved by some leading organisations around the world. While day one reporting may not be a goal you wish to achieve, day three reporting may well be.  Reading this paper will provide an impetus to shorten your month-end reporting process. 

What you will gain

  • Access to electronic versions of all templates, checklists in the white paper
  • Complete your month-end by three working days
  • Identify the appropriate better practices to speed up month-end routines
  • A step-by-step implementation work programme
  • A workshop to “post-it” re-engineer month-end processes template
  • Review case studies on quick month end reporting (day one and virtual closing)
  • Practical steps to overcome the common bottlenecks of: A/P close-off; accruals; budget holders’ variance analysis and commentary; journals; downloading GL reports to Excel, inter-company, writing the summary commentary etc.
  • How to take the “Charles Dickens” processes out of Accounts payable, one of the main barriers to quick reporting
  • The connection to decision based reporting and quarterly rolling forecasts

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. What is Day one reporting (DOR)?
  3. Benefits to management and the finance team
  4. The impact of quick reporting on the finance team and the organisation
  5. History of day one reporting
  6. Case study 1: Johnson & Johnson vision products USA
  7. Case study 2: a distributor and seller of alcoholic beverages
  8. Case study 3: Motorola 12 non events a year
  9. DOR in Australia based on a 1999 CPA study
  10. The common bottlenecks in month end reporting and techniques to get around them
  11. Letting go of report writing
  12. Producing more useful information during the month
  13. Closing accruals on Day –2
  14. Implementing a DOR strategy
  15. Suggested implementation plan
  16. Day one workshop
  17. Linkages to other leading management models
  18. Quarterly rolling forecasting
  19. Decision based reporting
  20. Reporting KPIs
  21. Last words
  22. Appendix 1: Checklist of implementation steps to reduce month-end reporting timeframes