Smartsheet Integration

The Problem:

Our client uses Smartsheet to track actual expenditure from their accounting system compared to planned expenditure per their FP&A's annual budget plan.

This involved importing actual expenditures into Smartsheet, comparing them to the budget and calculating a variance. However, as the month end close process took place, additional entries would be identified which would change the balances per the trial balance and ultimately cause this process to be repeated. This resulted in significant time wasted updating the same spreadsheet with actuals every month and rolling forward the explanations for variances

The Solution:

We built a customized desktop application which automatically performed the following tasks at the click of a button:

• Ingest the general ledger transactions from their ERP

• Automatically push the actual expenditure into Smartsheet

• Automatically calculate the variance

• Automatically determine if that variance is over a materiality threshold, and if so, flag it for review

• Generate a clear reconciliation between planned and actual expenditure

The Result:

The automation saved the client roughly 15 hours per month end close and avoided inaccuracies caused by having to rework the data for updated expenditure amounts