PERIODIC CLOSING PROCEDURES FOR FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

History:

For Federal government agencies, the year-end closing of the accounting books begins shortly after the end of the Federal government′s fiscal year. All Federal government agencies have to perform a final reconciliation before the books are closed and before new books can be opened for the new fiscal year. This process can take up to three months.

Challenge:

A number of our clients require assistance with operating and maintaining their financial management systems. Some specific issues faced by our clients were the periodic processing, closing, and reporting requirements. It was discovered that the monthly closing and reporting processes were slowly gaining time as more demand was placed on their systems.

Solution:

Starry Associates expertise in the periodic processing requirements and financial management systems provided the Federal client with the following solutions:

• Optimized and well-tuned the closing procedure.
• Continued tuning the software to improve its performance.
• Addressed the business processes associated with the month-end and year-end closing to reduce the effort involved in reconciliation.

Benefit:

The main system closed the month-end and quarter-end within 24 hours, and year-end within 48 hours. For the new Federal financial management system, Starry Associates had improved the timeframe provided by the system integrator by 300% for month-end, and quarter-end was closed within the same 24-hour time period. This new optimized and well-tuned closing procedure was achieved by less than half of the number of individuals, representing a more than 50% cut in cost. For the closing of FY 2006, it took less than 36 hours, a phenomenal accomplishment!