Financial Month-End Closing: European shared service centres
Lassila-Hyypiä, Katja (2019)
2019
All rights reserved. This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201904286206
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201904286206
Tiivistelmä
In the current globalized business environment companies need to concentrate on their core functions. However, companies have also essential support functions, such as finance. The support functions need to be organized in effective ways. Many large companies have established finance shared service centres (SSC) to support business needs. One of the critical processes in the finance area is the month-end closing process. The month-end closing provides a snapshot of all financial activities of a month and aggregates several subprocesses’ output into monthly financial reporting.
The aim of this thesis was to increase the understanding of the financial SSCs’ month-end closing process. In this research, the objective was to develop the financial month-end closing process in one corporation’s four studied shared service centres, particularly from the record-to-report point of view.
The chosen methodology was a qualitative case study. The data was collected from multiple sources. The main source was seventeen unstructured and semi structured interviews, as well as diaries of the month-end closing process steps. In addition, quantitative data of four SSCs’ journal entries regarding record-to-report process was analyzed and compared.
The current state of the month-end closing processes in four studied SSCs were described and discussed. Moreover, the research revealed bottlenecks in the process and shared the identified best practices.
As a conclusion, the starting point for the future development in month-end closing, as well as in other financial processes, is well defined shared service strategy. In addition, harmonization and standardization of the processes are essential before preparing the month-end closing for high-level automation.
The aim of this thesis was to increase the understanding of the financial SSCs’ month-end closing process. In this research, the objective was to develop the financial month-end closing process in one corporation’s four studied shared service centres, particularly from the record-to-report point of view.
The chosen methodology was a qualitative case study. The data was collected from multiple sources. The main source was seventeen unstructured and semi structured interviews, as well as diaries of the month-end closing process steps. In addition, quantitative data of four SSCs’ journal entries regarding record-to-report process was analyzed and compared.
The current state of the month-end closing processes in four studied SSCs were described and discussed. Moreover, the research revealed bottlenecks in the process and shared the identified best practices.
As a conclusion, the starting point for the future development in month-end closing, as well as in other financial processes, is well defined shared service strategy. In addition, harmonization and standardization of the processes are essential before preparing the month-end closing for high-level automation.