Key Features of Financial Management Software

A financial management software solution can empower an organization to more effectively manage the increasingly complex and multi-faceted transactions and processes it is faced with due to globalization, mergers and acquisitions, changing market conditions, business expansion and diversification, and other critical events. Additionally, with financial management software packages, a company can realize full compliance with stringent financial information management and reporting guidelines such as BASEL II and Sarbanes-Oxley.

So how does a financial management software system achieve all this, making global financial operations more efficient and productive than ever before? With a broad range of powerful features and capabilities such as:

1. Automation and Management of End-to-End General Accounting Procedures

Financial management software systems streamline and enhance all basic administrative financial processes from start to finish, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash flow management, purchasing, payroll, and general ledgers.

2. Support for Worldwide Financial Processes

With a financial management software package, companies have the tools and technologies they need – such as support for multiple currencies and conversions, languages, country-specific laws and guidelines, and multi-national transactions – to better coordinate activities that span multiple departments and business units, and improve the execution and management of all financial tasks across all global locations.

3. Planning and Forecasting

Companies who utilize financial management software solutions have a dramatically enhanced ability to leverage historical data to predict future financial activities such as trends and patterns in income, revenues, and expenses. Additionally, a financial management software system can allow an organization to understand how certain potential scenarios, such as market conditions, acquisitions, or the additional of new business units, can impact its financial status. This makes strategic planning more accurate and successful.

4. Cash Flow Management and Tracking

Tracking income as it is recognized by disparate departments and business units and monitoring how funds are spent across various divisions and locations are faster, easier, and more accurate with a financial management software package. By streamlining consolidations, allocations, budgets, and other cash flow management tasks and activities across an entire enterprise, financial management software delivers a complete, unhindered, real-time view of cash flow status as well as all related transactions.

5. Advanced Reporting and Analysis

The ability to rapidly generate thorough, consistent, and highly accurate balance sheets, profit and loss statements, budget allocations, and other important financial reports is a key feature of today’s most popular financial management software applications. Many financial management software packages also provide in-depth ad hoc analysis capabilities, so that financial professionals can easily create custom reports to satisfy their own unique information needs.

Many of the financial management software packages on the market today are built on powerful architectures that provide:

• Advanced security features to prevent unauthorized access to confidential financial data.
• Web-based access to eliminate cumbersome client/server implementations and maintenance while ensuring anytime, anywhere access to vital financial information.
• Seamless integration with other business applications to ensure rapid information sharing and full collaboration.