Five key steps for completing your annual financial report on time and within budget

Expectations around the annual financial report have drastically changed over the last 10 years. Reporting requirements have intensified, technology has shifted, and the average expected report length has significantly increased — rendering many annual financial reports dense, ineffective, and often unavailable until months after the close of the fiscal year.

Your company’s information is more valuable when it’s timely. An effective annual financial report provides financial statement users with an up-to-date, accurate overview of a utility’s financial position. However, by the time many annual financial reports reach the public, the provided information no longer represents a utility’s situation.

Here are five steps your utility can take to plan, prepare for, and produce a clear, efficient, and effective annual financial report shortly after fiscal year-end.

Key steps

1. Set a goal and communicate

Many companies make the mistake of completing an annual financial report the same way each year — following the same steps and timeline and often leading to repeated problems, delays, and pitfalls. For example, many utilities repeatedly wait between 60 and 90 days to close the books or hold open accounts payable. This can have considerable impacts on the overall financial reporting process.

To avoid past patterns, your finance department can identify a new series of project goals, determine a target completion date, and develop a timeline the project management team can refer to while creating the report. Developing a plan and using well-determined estimates can allow a utility to close their books more quickly, provide more accurate data, and shorten the issuance of the annual financial report.

Before beginning the annual financial report or developing a project management team, the finance department should assess the utility’s needs and resources. It can then identify project goals by completing the following steps:

• Identify key stakeholders in the process
• Determine and document the project’s goal with stakeholders
• Communicate the goal with team members across multiple departments
• Determine costs and benefits
• Focus on costs and benefits moving forward