Finance department processes for AI implementation

1. Prepare budgeting procedures and distribute templates to departments.
2. Collect departmental inputs and consolidate them into overall financial budgets.
3. Analyse budgets, check assumptions and agree them with functional owners.
4. Prepare annual budgets and agree target metrics.
5. Maintain rolling forecasts and regularly revise expectations.
6. Adjust plans and forecasts as business conditions change.
7. Perform driver-based planning, unit economics analysis and KPI modelling.
8. Monitor financial KPIs and conduct performance reviews.
9. Plan capital expenditure and investment programmes.

1. Sales report.
2. Cash Flow.
3. P&L.
4. Balance sheet or movements in key balance sheet items.
5. Management reporting by legal entity, business line, product and project.
6. Margin and profitability analysis by customer, channel, segment and project.
7. Executive / monthly management packs for leadership.
8. Ad hoc analytical reports to support management decisions.

Related operating model domain

The corresponding domain is Management Reporting and Business Analysis in the full function map.

1. Budget-versus-actual analysis: identify variances, outliers and unusual transactions.
2. Identify the causes of variances.
3. Adjust plans, forecasts and management decisions where necessary.
4. Analyse revenue, margins, operating expenditure, capital expenditure, EBITDA and cash flow.
5. Analyse revenue quality: discounts, bonuses, rebates, short payments and disputes.
6. Analyse accounts receivable and accounts payable turnover.
7. Analyse cash conversion and working capital efficiency.
8. Prepare analytical notes and decision memos for management.

1. Collect and approve payment requests.
2. Maintain planned and actual payment schedules by category, department and project.
3. Perform daily cash positioning and monitor cash balances.
4. Forecast short-term cash flow.
5. Confirm and execute payments.
6. Manage bank accounts, signatories and online banking systems.
7. Manage intragroup liquidity and cash reallocation.
8. Monitor covenants, liquidity buffers and financing agreement restrictions.
9. Manage repayment schedules for loans, interest and other obligations.
10. Execute foreign exchange transactions and monitor currency and interest rate risks.

1. Financial modelling and scenario analysis.
2. Business valuation.
3. Stress testing of liquidity, revenue, margins and debt burden.
4. Analysis of investment proposals, capital expenditure and business cases.
5. Support for funding, refinancing and restructuring decisions.
6. Finance support for M&A, corporate changes and due diligence.

Related domains

This area overlaps with FP&A, Treasury and Corporate Finance.

1. Negotiate new loans with banks.
2. Prepare bank documentation: monitoring reports, new loan applications and covenant reports.
3. Interact with tax authorities.
4. Communicate with senior management and shareholders.
5. Prepare materials for boards, credit committees and external stakeholders.
6. Interact with external auditors, advisers and inspection bodies.
7. Coordinate with accounting, commercial teams, procurement, legal and functional leaders.

1. Counterparty checks.
2. Legal due diligence on transactions.
3. Identify and assess financial risks and finance-related operational risks.
4. Monitor limits, authority levels and segregation of duties.
5. Monitor fraud, duplicate transaction, leakage and manual override risks.
6. Monitor early warning indicators and escalate exceptions.
7. Test control procedures and track corrective actions.
8. Support internal reviews and internal audit activities.

1. Record business transactions in the accounting system.
2. Close the month, quarter and year.
3. Perform reconciliations, accruals, provisions, reclassifications and period adjustments.
4. Reconcile intercompany balances and intragroup transactions.
5. Consolidate actuals across legal entities and prepare management reporting data.
6. Prepare trial balances, supporting schedules and audit materials.
7. Check mappings from accounting to management reporting.

1. Plan and initiate purchases.
2. Approve spending requests.
3. Check business justification and budget compliance.
4. Select suppliers and monitor commercial terms.
5. Prepare purchase orders, contracts and commitments.
6. Accept goods and services and confirm delivery or completion.
7. Process invoices and supporting documents.
8. Maintain a register of invoices due for payment.
9. Monitor accounts payable and supplier payment terms.

1. Support commercial terms and pricing governance.
2. Check customer terms, credit limits and settlement arrangements.
3. Issue invoices, service acceptance certificates and other billing documents.
4. Check revenue recognition accuracy.
5. Manage accounts receivable and collections.
6. Resolve short payments, disputes, credit notes and adjustments.
7. Monitor discounts, bonuses, rebates and non-standard terms.
8. Analyse overdue balances and collections quality.

1. Tax planning and an obligations calendar.
2. Prepare and submit tax returns.
3. Prepare mandatory accounting and statutory reports.
4. Monitor changes in requirements and assess their impact on processes.
5. Check document completeness, archiving and inspection readiness.
6. Prepare document packs for tax inspections, audits and external requests.

1. Maintain consistent definitions of management metrics, analytical dimensions and reference data.
2. Manage master data and cross-system mappings.
3. Integrate ERP, CRM, online banking, BI and Excel models.
4. Monitor data quality, completeness and timely loading.
5. Administer finance workflows and approval rules.
6. Document policies, procedures, definitions and process governance.
7. Prioritise changes to finance department systems and processes.
8. Develop automation, analytics and AI use cases for finance.

1. A shared calendar for budgets, forecasts, close, reporting, tax and covenant deadlines.
2. Clearly assigned owners for processes, data, metrics and changes.
3. Rules for escalating variances and exceptions.
4. Embedded controls across budgeting, procurement, payments, contracts and commercial activities.
5. Minimise manual data transfers without an audit trail.