Chapter 5: Financial Close and Reporting

Executive Resource

This chapter, Financial Close and Reporting, describes the processes, risks & recommended controls required to maintain complete & accurate financial documentation.

December 8, 2022

Alyssa G. Martin

National Strategy Leader

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What’s Inside

This is one part of a series designed to help organizations identify risks and improve internal controls over financial reporting. Click here to access the rest of the series, including a set of five downloadable tools organizations can use to help assess their own controls.

Chapter 5, Financial Close and Reporting, describes the processes, risks and recommended controls required to maintain complete and accurate financial documentation.

Key Points

Financial Close and Reporting includes the processes required to produce complete and accurate financial documentation, including regulatory filings. Key processes include:

General accounting close
Financial statement preparation
Disclosures and notes, if any
Regulatory reporting, where applicable

Chapter 5 includes an overview of these financial reporting functions, descriptions of processes and subprocesses, descriptions of internal controls that organizations can leverage to manage risks, and a table describing key risks and controls for each process and subprocess.

In addition, this chapter includes a downloadable, customizable risk–control matrix with a detailed list of risk considerations by process, with suggested controls to address each one.

Why It Matters

Whatever the size or complexity of your organization, implementing the right controls over sales to collection processes lays the foundation for a well-controlled financial reporting environment. This guide gives you tools to begin assessing and improving your own organization’s controls

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Internal control over financial reporting (ICFR) is an integral element in every financial leader’s toolbox. Having the right controls, properly implemented, allows leaders to ensure that they have timely, accurate and complete financial information to make informed decisions. Weaver designed this guide as a roadmap to help any organization, regardless of industry, understand these cycles, the specific processes and subprocesses you need, and controls you can implement to manage your financial risks. It will also walk you through a step-by-step analysis of financial and operational risk and control considerations for the five primary cycles.

The five primary cycles are universal, in that every organization has them. However, every organization is unique in its exact processes and needs. As you use this guide and the downloadable risk-control matrices, you will need to examine your own processes to customize controls for your operations, while eliminating what is unnecessary.

What’s Inside?

This chapter, Financial Close and Reporting, describes the processes, risks and recommended controls required to maintain complete and accurate financial documentation.

Go to Weaver’s Executive Resource Center to download the corresponding Risk–Control Matrix, which includes common processes, risks and controls that you can customize to your organization’s specific needs.

Download the Complete Set

In addition to this chapter, Structuring Effective Controls over the Five Primary Transaction Cycles includes an overview and four additional chapters with information about the other transaction cycles. It also includes illustrative risk–control matrices for all of the five cycles that you can use to help identify and begin closing gaps in your own controls.