Managing financial consolidation across multiple entities, currencies, and accounting standards can be overwhelming. Manual processes, data accuracy issues, and compliance pressures add complexity. OneStream EPM simplifies this process, helping finance teams achieve accuracy and efficiency while ensuring compliance.

This article highlights how OneStream EPM transforms financial consolidation and reporting, streamlining workflows and reducing manual effort for businesses. Keep reading to learn more.

Understanding Modern Financial Consolidation Challenges

In today’s global business environment, financial consolidation is more complex than ever, with data quality and accuracy being significant challenges. Despite technological advancements, around 80% of companies with revenues exceeding $50 million still rely on standalone Excel spreadsheets.

The key challenges:

• Collecting Data from Different Systems and Formats: Companies often need help to gather data from various systems and formats, which creates inconsistencies and delays in financial reporting.
• Converting Currencies and Managing Exchange Rate Changes: Currency conversions and fluctuating exchange rates are complex and can lead to inaccurate financial reporting if not handled carefully.
• Reconciling Intercompany Transactions: Intercompany transactions must be accurately reconciled to ensure that the financial statements reflect true and fair values, often requiring significant time and effort.
• Meeting Various International Accounting Standards: Organisations need to comply with different accounting standards across regions, which can complicate consolidation processes and increase the risk of non-compliance.
• Time-Consuming Manual Processes: Many financial tasks are still performed manually, leading to inefficiencies, delays, and a higher likelihood of errors, especially in large organisations.
• Risks in Data Handling and Security: Protecting sensitive financial data is critical, but the complexity of managing large volumes of data increases the risk of breaches or mishandling, especially when data is shared across multiple platforms.

What is OneStream’s Unified Platform?

OneStream’s unified platform revolutionises financial consolidation by integrating all financial processes into a single cloud-based system. It simplifies complex enterprise financial management tasks, improves efficiency, and ensures real-time collaboration, making it easier for organisations to manage budgeting, forecasting, and reporting seamlessly.

Core Components and Integration Capabilities

The platform’s architecture offers powerful integration through pre-built connectors that link with over 250 systems, including Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft Dynamics. Your finance team can:

• Connect directly with drill-back functionality, allowing for easy access to source data for deeper analysis.
• Synchronise data between systems in real-time, ensuring up-to-date information across all platforms.
• Validate data automatically at every stage, reducing manual errors and enhancing data accuracy.
• Connect to multiple data sources, enabling seamless integration across various systems and processes.
• Track complete audit trails for transparency, ensuring full visibility and compliance with internal and external regulations.

Extensible Dimensionality Framework

OneStream’s Extensible Dimensionality® makes it unique in the EPM implementation world. Your corporate office can maintain standardised reporting while business units extend their reporting and planning requirements. This approach preserves corporate standards and ensures consistency across financial processes. Teams get the flexibility they need for detailed operational reporting.

Data Quality Management Features

OneStream EPM’s detailed validation framework ensures the quality of your data. The platform makes data quality management a core component instead of a separate module. This integrated approach provides strict controls and builds confidence in your financial data through:

• Automated Validation Process: Data undergoes thorough validation at every stage, from import to final reporting. The system flags discrepancies automatically and prevents accidental data overwrites to ensure the highest data integrity.
• Complete Audit Trail: Your team gets complete visibility into all data changes, metadata modifications, and process alterations. This clear path from report to source builds trust in your financial results and helps maintain compliance.

Streamlining the Financial Close Process

OneStream EPM’s powerful automation tools will improve your financial close process by streamlining operations and boosting accuracy. The platform’s advanced workflow features have changed how companies handle month-end closes, eliminating manual work.

Automated Consolidation Workflows

OneStream’s smart automation features make your financial close process smooth and efficient. The platform offers you:

• Automated data loading and validation, ensuring fast and accurate data processing with minimal manual intervention.
• Standardised close processes across entities, streamlining workflows and ensuring consistency across your organisation’s financial reporting.
• Intelligent workflow management helps teams follow optimal paths for each financial task, , improves efficiency, and reduces errors.
• Guided user processes for consistency, ensuring every user follows a structured approach to meet compliance and reporting standards.
• Immediate progress monitoring, providing real-time insights into the status of the close process, allowing for proactive decision-making and quicker issue resolution.

Real-time Validation and Error Detection

With real-time validation capabilities, your financial consolidation becomes more accurate. OneStream’s advanced anomaly detection uses AI-driven algorithms to spot discrepancies right away, reducing the risk of errors in your financial statements. The platform’s smart system checks data at every step to maintain consistency and accuracy throughout consolidation.

Your team learns about potential problems through automated alerts and notifications that enable quick fixes. This proactive approach reduces error detection and correction time, speeding up your close cycle.

Customisable Reporting Templates

OneStream’s customisable templates adapt to match your company’s specific needs. The platform comes with:

• Flexible template design capabilities, enabling you to create custom reports and templates that align with your organisation’s specific needs and branding.
• Up-to-the-minute data visualisation options provide dynamic charts and graphs for real-time insights that help decision-making.
• Automated report generation, eliminating manual effort and ensuring timely, accurate reporting for key stakeholders.
• Multi-format export options allow reports to be exported in various formats, such as PDF, Excel, and more, for ease of distribution.
• Role-based reporting access ensures that sensitive financial data is accessible only to authorised individuals and maintains security and compliance.

These features help you create tailored reports while maintaining consistency throughout your organisation. Your team can quickly generate everything from high-level executive summaries to detailed financial statements.

Drill-Through Analytics and Insights

OneStream’s drill-through capabilities bring unprecedented transparency to your financial data. This powerful feature lets you examine transaction details with a single click, saving your team 15-20 minutes per investigation compared to traditional methods.

The platform lets you move from consolidated numbers to source transactions naturally. Your data’s integrity remains intact as you examine the details behind every figure. OneStream’s intelligent design keeps you within its environment during analysis for a unified user experience.

Regulatory Compliance Management

OneStream’s complete compliance management features help you meet regulatory requirements.

Your compliance reporting becomes more effective through:

• Meaningful Reports: Your stakeholders and auditors receive clear, valuable compliance documentation. The platform’s financial data quality management (FDQM) shows every step, from reports to sources.
• Strict Process Controls: Your robust controls include data certification, sign-off procedures, and audit trails. SOX 302 and 404 certification questionnaires help spot potential weaknesses before they affect your financial processes.

Futuresense uses OneStream’s reporting capabilities to revolutionise your financial processes. Our EPM implementation expertise helps you maximise these features while maintaining high data quality and process efficiency standards.

Conclusion

OneStream EPM is a complete solution that simplifies and accurately consolidates complex financial data. The powerful platform offers automated workflows, instant validation, and sophisticated reporting tools, which reduce manual work and improve data accuracy.

Futuresense has spent years specialising in EPM implementations. We help organisations like yours improve their financial consolidation processes. Our proven methods and dedicated support will give your OneStream implementation clear value and lasting results for your business.