This article talks about how to unlock the value of your financial reports with automation.
At its core, financial reporting isn’t just about numbers — it’s about telling the story of a business. An excellent financial report captures performance, highlights challenges, goals, and future projections.
But the problem is that building great reports takes time. Especially if you want to create customised reports that resonate with your audience to help them understand the numbers, measure the metrics that matter, and make confident decisions.
This is where financial reporting automation comes into its own. Whether you’re an advisor or an internal finance team, automated reporting helps you work smarter — shifting time away from repetitive tasks so you can focus on higher-value, strategic work, and take action on the data contained in your reports. Automated reporting is also less prone to errors and lets you deliver reports using real-time data.
In this article, we’ll walk you through why financial reporting automation matters, the benefits of automation, and how Fathom makes it simple.
In simple terms, financial reporting automation is using software to handle the repetitive, manual parts of creating reports — like data collection, number crunching, and visualisation — so you can focus on what really matters: the story behind the numbers and taking actions to improve business performance.
The best financial reporting automation tools help you
This reporting feature has evolved into something more than just a “nice to have.” Businesses who take that big leap into automating their reports are more likely to have the bandwidth to focus on higher-value tasks that will move the needle in their business.
Let’s state the obvious here, this is so much better than the alternative: getting bogged down by working on your financial reporting manually.
Advisors and businesses who are looking for new ways to optimize their operations, should seriously consider the prospect of automating their financial reporting.
The automation of financial reporting opens a whole new raft of benefits to businesses, and these lead to significant operational enhancements.
For one, automating the reporting process helps businesses drastically cut down on time required to generate their reports. This increased adeptness allows businesses to allocate resources more effectively and productively, allowing the focus to shift towards those core strategic activities that you otherwise would not have been able to get around to.
Additionally, here are just a handful of benefits that automated financial reporting could bring for your business:
Remember that automation capabilities are not just designed for large enterprises with complex business structures. Small and medium-sized businesses will also reap the same benefits from financial reporting automation, streamlining their internal processes and getting clearer picture of their financial health.
Sure, automation saves time but the real value to finance leaders and accountants runs deeper. Here’s what you unlock when you let software do the heavy lifting:
And remember, automation isn’t just for the big players. Small and mid-sized businesses benefit just as much (if not more) from streamlined, automated reporting.
Financial reporting automation in Fathom forms part of its management reporting software feature, where users can create custom management reports and share their business results in a clear, compelling way.
Businesses and advisors using Fathom have access to several features designed to uplift the automation and scaling of their reports.
Fathom allows users to create custom management reports with ease. Users who have a report template they like can schedule a report to be generated from that template for each reporting period.
This report is automatically created from the desired template, and the user is notified by email that it is ready. They can then review the report before they publish and share with their client.
For more information about this reporting feature, view our help centre article on scheduling automated reports.
Creating automated financial reports is quick and easy with Fathom’s pre-defined templates.
Users who create a custom template in Fathom can reuse this same template quickly whenever they need to in future periods.
If a template is shared across companies in the Fathom organization, a report can be easily created for each of these companies; allowing for a standardized approach to reporting.
For more information about this reporting feature, view our help centre article on managing custom and predefined templates.
With a feature known as “Placeholders”, Fathom users can add text to their reports that references any financial or non-financial data in your actuals date range that has been defined within Fathom; eliminating any data entry errors in the process.
This enables you to reference numbers within text without having to manually update them if you run the report again for next month or with a different company.
Another text and commentary feature of Fathom is called “Observations,” which helps automated financial reporting through a displayed message based on the outcome for the reporting period.
For more information about this reporting feature, view our help centre article on text and commentary in reports.
Finding the best automated financial reporting software for your business starts by assessing your financial reporting needs. You’ll need to think about any challenges your business currently has, and how financial reporting software with automation capabilities can provide a solution for them. From here you’ll have a better understanding of where to focus your attention.
After you’ve selected an automated financial reporting tool that suits your needs, you’ll need to start thinking about how it can be configured to suit your business’s processes and goals. Careful planning and execution are required to make sure the software can be used as effectively as possible.
When implementing automated financial reporting software, training your team is essential. All team members who’ll need to use the new tool will need to be educated on it, so they can navigate the automative reporting features with confidence.
Fathom's simple integrations with leading accounting software solutions, such as QuickBooks, Xero, and MYOB make setup is quick and easy for businesses who use these systems.
It is essential for businesses and advisors to adopt best practices for financial reporting automation if they want to really use the software to its full potential.
In the section below, we’ll give you guidance on some best practices your business can look to incorporate today:
Automated financial reporting capabilities are not just a fad or trend – they're here to stay. We see these capabilities reshaping a new norm for businesses and advisors managing their reporting processes.
Those organizations who embrace automation will experience more streamlining in their operations, more accuracy in their reporting function and more headspace to focus on their own strategic growth.
As this type of technology continues evolving, the potential for automated financial reporting will only grow, offering new ways for businesses to be innovative with their reporting needs.
Try our innovative financial reporting automation software free for 14 days to see how it helps save considerable time and effort in your management reporting efforts.
Fathom provides powerful tools that can help you say goodbye to creating reports from scratch; using automative capabilities to jump-start your workflow.
With Fathom you can put reporting on autopilot, by scheduling the delivery of reports to your inbox at the click of a button, so that your team is kept up to date with the latest results.
If you would like to learn more about Fathom prior to starting our credit-card free trial, you can read all about its benefits on our website.
Fathom’s automated financial reporting software is easy to implement and use. All you’ll need to do is start your credit-card free trial today, and you’ll be able to build your first automated financial report in minutes. Get started today.
Automated financial report offers significant benefits for a businesses and advisors, such as increased efficiency, improved accuracy and decision-making enhancements.
If you are using Fathom for your financial reporting automation software, you will experience many key benefits:
By automating financial reporting, businesses can free up time to focus on more strategic activities that contribute to their core goals.
We understand that businesses using Fathom as an automated financial reporting tool are entrusting us with one of their most valuable assets - the financial data of their company or client. We treat this responsibility very seriously.
We understand that:
View Fathom’s security page for more information on this topic.
Fathom’s automated financial reporting software powers insights for businesses worldwide.
Fathom is easy to implement and use. All you need to do is start your free 14-day trial today to build your first report in minutes. No credit card is required.
Kit is the Content Marketing Manager for The Access Group APAC and Fathom. He is a former journalist with extensive experience in content writing and copywriting across various industries, including higher education, not-for-profit, and finance sectors.
