What are the best practices for managing financial reporting across multiple countries?

Local requirements are crucial for establishing a finance system in each country, which can later be integrated into a central finance system. Without first comprehending the legal & financial regulations & needs in each country, it is impossible to plan, draft, select, and implement the appropriate finance system. For instance, Germany has a highly intricate finance system compared to the UK, and Italy has its own specificities, including the use of the "bolletino." Therefore, understanding local rules & regulations forms the foundation for the successful implementation of any international intercompany financial system. If you proceed differently & initiate such a project w/o the required groundwork and preparation, failure is inevitable.

Is really important to know and learn domestic rules, but always it depence the company, and the rules of company. So you need to know the local rules and company rules to be able to create the reports for managers.

You could be working in a company that is in a country, with a home office located in another country, and with a partner/shareholder from a third country. Having priority the home office reporting framework, then the local office reporting framework, and then the other partner/ shareholder reporting framework. These will be driven by the legal requirements of each country. In some cases you will have your main reporting based on US GAAP based reporting framework or based on the IFRS reporting framework. You will need to set up the reporting process based on your main set of rules, and then traslate to the different sets of reports as required, using as many automatic tools as possible, to minimize errors and keep consistency.

Reporting framework is the principal tool for CFO, so this or These reports needs to be defined by de CFO of the global company or Group, because this reports are like a consolidation process. Steps to do that: - Control close fiscal year of all companies of the group. - Control currencies and use the same process to calculate currencies. - Specify the reporting framework - Specify the date to delivery all the reports from all the companies.

The local statutory requirements maybe different but it’s important that we speak the same language ie have a common reporting framework like IFRS as the base. Local GAAP adjustments should be made on top of IFRS numbers so that comparable results are available across all jurisdictions. Common framework also entails that we have a single reporting system, with common meta data ie Chart of Accounts.

This point in fact is a result of the second question, but the system or tool to extract all company information, should be a global tool, I mean, I have customers who have differents tool for reporting it depence of country, this is a big mistake, so: - The same tool for all companies - The same process for all companies - The same process if we use differents ERP, so we need a Data base, Webstorage to put all the information and then create the reports.

Simplifying the processes helps to automate the tasks effectively. Automation of tasks save considerable time and resources which can be used to do revenue generating business activities. Majority of the times, data and information is scattered and do not serve the purpose. Simple and concise information accelerates the decision making process.

Every country is different, laws, policies, culture but most important people are different. In order to tackle this challenge there are several methodologies, one of them make your processes simple and standard. Some tips might include building a glossary make sure everyone understands the same concept, language can be an extra challenge. It is also important to make sure everyone fully understand your processes and workflows befores starting your automation process.

A dedicated team and leaders with problem solving and analytical skill is the bone of every developed business. The best practice for managing financial terms is to use advanced tools and software for working in business i.e. spreadsheet, SQL, Google Cloud, CRM ERP software etc.