Many processes and groups within the Finance function have benefited from purpose-built provision software solutions over the past 20+ years – payroll, accounts payable, general ledger accounting, financial planning, reporting and other processes. Meanwhile, the tax accountants have been toiling away in obscurity, mostly relying on homegrown Excel spreadsheets to accomplish the complex task of tax provisioning and reporting. But that situation is changing.
CFO’s and audit committees are seeking innovation from tax departments to decrease financial close cycles and increase transparency into tax planning and reporting. On one hand, it is critical for CFOs and management teams to understand the financial impact strategic tax planning activities, such as transfer pricing, can have on the organization while also considering public perception and increasing skepticism about corporate tax practices. On the other hand, CFO’s are under intense pressure to drive productivity savings through the back office and redeploy resources into business partner-focused roles for sales, operations or directly into lines of business.
With Tax accounting a major cause for financial restatements and reported material weaknesses, CFO’s and Audit committees are demanding innovation. Despite oversight and internal controls required from Sarbanes Oxley (SOX), growing public scrutiny for corporations to pay their “fair share” of taxes has senior executives seeking more transparency into strategic tax planning, provision, and compliance activities to ensure organizational interpretations and practices are defensible.
One of the key advantages of the OneStream platform is that customers can extend the value of the platform beyond the basics of corporate performance management (CPM). While the platform supports the complex requirements of global enterprises in financial consolidation, planning, reporting, analysis and data quality – it can be extended to support additional requirements such as account reconciliations, cash forecasting, lease accounting and as a tax provisioning software.
