REDWOOD ROBOTICS™ SOFTWARE FOR FINANCE: CLOSE MANAGEMENT

For the last two decades, most companies have rationalized and achieved substantial efficiency within their group function, specifically around group consolidation and disclosure management.

However, most organizations continue to employ substantial numbers of employees within their global business services (GBS) and shared service center (SSC) teams to manage the financial close process.

Labor arbitrage was the traditional answer. But today businesses are turning to robotics to manage the close.

Financial close is repetitive but complex and often spans multiple geographies and departments, and requires multiple levels of approvals and controls.

Financial close can have up to 50 to 70 separate processes with sub-processes running into the 100s per entity. The following example shows the level of complexity and controls.

CONTROL YOUR END-TO-END CLOSE ACROSS YOUR ENTIRE RECORD TO REPORT PROCESS

Consider this process starting in the retained organization with an email to 100s of cost center managers across the business. Responses and adjusted numbers must be chased and sent to the shared services department for processing.

This is testing enough but now imagine 100s of such processes with dependencies and variations and all

needing to be completed within a given timeframe with perfect audit trail.

Redwood can robotize this and all other close items with complete control on the whole close process. For a robotic solution to remove 70-90% of manual activities while providing full visibility and control it must have the following attributes:

DESK TOP AUTOMATION

ERP INTEGRATION

CLOUD BASED INTEGRATION

EXTERNAL WEBSITES

ORCHESTRATION, SLA & WORKFLOW

PRE-CONFIGURED COMPONENTS

GLOBAL MANAGEMENT & ROLL OUT

ETC...

ETC...

ETC...

www.another.comwww.barclays.comwww.supplierblacklist.com

SOAP

ROBOTICS - REQUIRED COMPONENTS

Redwood achieved 90% automation of the earlier financial close process.

GR/IRAPARSales-Revenue-BankFixed AssetsProjectsIntangibles & GoodwillIntercompanyDeferred RevenueExpense AnalysisResearch & DevelopmentAccrualsAllocationsPre-PaidsProvisionsPayroll-Stock Compensation

Open New PeriodClose Current PeriodCost AllocationsRun Depreciation Work In Progress (WIP)GR/IR Accruals and ClearingAR close to GL AP close to GL FX ValuationRevaluations and CostingInterest RatesRecurring Journals Adjustments Journals Entity Close

Sales to ARPO to APCash and BankFixed AssetsBalance Sheet recon (BSR)Defined BSR templates Flexible Recon Rules Inventory and Materials Inter- Intra- CompanyFixed Assets to GLPayroll to GLOther Sub LedgersProfit Center to GLFI to COGL to Consolidation

Extract to Consolidation SystemVerificationPerform Consolidation

FINANCIAL CLOSE TASKS G/L PROCESSING RECONCILATIONS CONSOLIDATION DISCLOSURE

Audit TrailProcess Documentation

Process AnalyticsConsolidation System Extract

Financial Reporting ExtractProfitability Reporting

ProjectsServices

AUDIT / REPORTING

Representative activities and resources assigned to various stages of the A2R process in a multi-billion dollar corporation.

THE ACCOUNT TO REPORT PROCESS

To keep track of the global close process at any given period, an organization needs the ability to define all close tasks, dependencies, predecessors and successors as well as manual

alerts and completion feedback.

Redwood Task Management provides a configurable, web-based control center where all accounting and finance tasks can be managed.

Task Management uses a hierarchical task list, role-based workflow and real-time dashboards, and allows process owners to track and control a variety of task types,

including month-end close checklists, tax filings and more.When linked to Robotic Close Management all such tasks are picked up by pre-defined robotic processes and executed automatically. A Kanban-style dashboard lets all process owners monitor their related processes as robots progress their activities from planned to progress to review and completed.

Activities requiring attention are automatically alerted via email and a personalized inbox. The inbox presents users with required actions, information as well as the necessary evidence to allow the process owner to take the necessary actions without having to do additional investigation.

TASK MANAGEMENT

Run allocationRun Forex revaluation

CLOSE MANAGEMENT

Robots can pick up and execute each system-related task including:

Run DepreciationRun allocation routines

Run customized transactions

Redwood robots automatically detect any failures and errors and route them to the correct business unit to be resolved. The solution keeps track of all related dependencies and informs the relevant process owners of errors.

In a complex organization these alone can add up to dozens of activities all needing manual execution and intervention. All such activities are automated completely with clear dashboards, relevant KPIs and a full audit trail.

HR leave accrualDoubt debt provisions

PROVISIONS AND ACCRUALS

Redwood robots can also replicate and perform retained organization activities, including:

Obsolete stock provisionsPre-payments accrual

Payroll stock compensationInter-company accruals

Consider the example below of a typical accrual and provision process that normally involves accessing different applications and departments for the relevant information. Many resources are needed to reconcile and re-format the data and search for anything that may be missing. In addition, relevant approvals must be sought

and then the journals prepared sent to the business unit responsible for posting into ERP.

This HR leave accrual example can be automated up to 100% and contains the following processes:

Extract salary information from payrollReconcile with HR information to calculate holiday entitlement and required accrualSummarize data to protect privacyCreate provision journal

Mail to shared service/finance personnel for approvalPost journalCollect posting evidenceUpdate close task list and create all necessary audit trail in an easy to investigate format

Robots can do all the preparation and place the correct group of accounts information in the right template. They automatically route to the defined reviewers and approvers and

document the evidence for later review and audit.

More importantly, they don’t need to extract all the

information to find the right evidence. All reconciliation can be performed directly in the underlying application and only the required line item details are presented in the templates.

These templates can be refreshed in near real time without the need for full extract. They also:

BALANCE SHEET RECONCILIATION

Define account risk levelsDefine account groups to be reconciledCreate preparer, reviewer and approver profiles with appropriate security. All preparation work is completed by the robots and automatically routed to the next action items

Generate rules and templatesAuto-certify based on the above rulesTake actions such as ‘set next review date’ and ‘activate correction journals’ directly from the line item on the template

Redwood reconciliation robots can remove more than 90% of the preparer’s activities leaving the reviewers and approvers to focus on exceptions and any high risk items.

Auto-reconcile counter party line items at transaction level, clear the matched items in the underlying application and route unreconciled items to the person responsible for clearing.

INTER-COMPANY RECONCILIATION

Auto-reconcile counter party line items at transaction level, clear the matched items in the underlying application and create accruals for the unreconciled items.

Auto-reconcile counter party line items at transaction level, clear the matched items in the underlying application and create the opposite AP or AR transactions with required approvals, threshold or by specific rules.

For more information on Redwood Robotics software, please visit www.redwood.com/robotics

Automatically identify inter-company-related orders and invoices, pick up POs or invoices from one company and create sales orders or invoices directly into the counter party’s books or as a parked item.

INTER-COMPANY HUB

Reconcile the posted items at document currency (or by specific rules) and in case of foreign currency items automatically post the P&L on exchange where needed.

Automatically clear these transactions within the underlying application. Transfer the remaining differences such as ‘goods in transit’ or ‘cash in transit' onto group consolidation with commentary where required.

Build easy to use journal templates.Define location for placement of journals, such as task list, existing SSC framework, files, SharePoint, web portal etc...Robots pick up templates, validate metadata directly with the underlying ERP and return errors directly to the owner for correction. Rules can be set to reject the whole journal or incorrect line item only.Where the underlying ERP contains limits on the number of lines it can automatically split the incoming journals and keep track of the split items.Posting evidence can be sent to the owners automatically.The process owner’s graphical dashboard allows them to keep track of all necessary KPIs in real time. Provisions and accrual robots can also calculate and create these journals and feed the same journal entry management robots.

JOURNAL ENTRY MANAGEMENT