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Tax Reports Not Making Cents? Visualizations Are Your Friend

insightsoftware -
July 31, 2023

insightsoftware is a global provider of reporting, analytics, and performance management solutions, empowering organizations to unlock business data and transform the way finance and data teams operate.

23 07 Blog Taxreportsnotmakingcents Website

Tax reporting and forecasting can be confusing processes for even the most seasoned tax professionals. With the first filing for BEPS Pillar 2.0 looming on the horizon, it’s more important than ever that you iron out any kinks in your end-to-end tax reporting process. Confusing new tax terminology and reports will need to be clearly laid out to help bring executives along as you figure out this new compliance landscape.

Organizations often rely on manual processes to pull reports from multiple systems accounts, which takes away valuable time for analysis and increases the risk for errors in reporting. A recent Hanover Research survey found that nearly 50% of tax and finance professionals felt unable to fully complete their reporting tasks because their current manual processes were too time-consuming.

In addition to being too time-consuming to create, reports are often layered over pages and pages of spreadsheets, and there’s no good way to include nonfinancial data when you’re looking at a wall of numbers. As reporting becomes more sophisticated, your tax team needs to be able to interpret and explain hundreds or even thousands of data lines.

The good news: there is a way to optimize your tax reporting and forecasting process. Here are steps to help you show the relationship between your financial and nonfinancial data so you can tell the story behind your numbers.

Step 1: Integrate a Purpose-Built Tax Reporting Tool

Imagine how much stronger your finished tax reports and forecasts could be if you were able to halve the time spent on manual data gathering and instead focus on interpreting the numbers. By integrating a tax system like Longview Tax with your existing enterprise resource planning tool (ERP), you can significantly decrease tax reporting time by automating data collection and aggregation.

This is particularly helpful for multi-jurisdiction organizations, as Longview Tax enables data collection from multiple ERPs, consolidation applications, and supplemental sources. Rather than pulling data from several sources and going to the effort of entering, comparing, and collating that data in Excel spreadsheets, you can download real-time tax data to a single, centralized source for analysis and interpretation.

More than just a time-saver, Longview Tax also significantly reduces the potential for errors in reporting by automating many of the standard operational tasks typically completed in tax reporting and forecasting. More confidence in the accuracy of your numbers means more time for value-added analysis so you can deliver a more complete picture of your company financials.

BEPS Pillar Two: The Data Challenge and Approach to Tax Transformation

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Step 2: Communicate Your Tax Analyses More Effectively with Dashboards and Visualizations

No matter how much time your tax team spends on reporting, the reports won’t do much good if tax professionals are the only people who can read them. This is especially true when reporting against new complex tax laws like BEPS Pillar Two that are full of technical, unfamiliar language. Pillar Two allows a jurisdiction to impose tax where an effective tax rate in a jurisdiction falls below 15 percent. It may seem simple, but these changes will undoubtedly create hurdles in tax reporting for those affected.

If you are delivering your tax insights via a spreadsheet or bare-bones report, you will likely experience the following challenges:

  • Creating reports to meet C-Level needs is tedious, time consuming, and difficult. Reports only have numeric representation and it’s difficult to paint a complete picture.
  • The current solution publishes reports that are rich with data, but lack a more modern user experience, like interactive dashboards, tables, and charts. There is an over reliance on Excel, which is consuming and creates potential error prone data.
  • Adding an intuitive dashboarding and visualization tool like CXO to your tax reporting will transform numbers-based reports into dynamic visual reports that are accessible and easy for anyone to understand.

CXO integrates with the leading EPM systems, giving you easy access to your data — no need to ask IT to help you import the data for analysis and interpretation. The same cannot be said for traditional BI tools. Additionally, you’re able to pull nonfinancial data such as environmental, social, and corporate governance information into your reports and see how it impacts the overall health and position of your organization. Combine your numbers with graphics and storyboards to present your data as a cohesive narrative that tells the story behind the numbers.

Make clear, easy-to-understand visual reports that bring your tax data to life for anyone.

  • Optimize your reporting process to maximize insight. CXO makes it effortless to build C-Level reports and dashboards against Longview data. Streamline your tax reporting process by spending less time on manual tasks and more time on analysis. Show off your tax analysis in ways that people can grasp better.
  • Provide an enhanced C-level reporting experience. CXO brings the reporting capabilities C-Level execs expect to Longview applications. Work with a modern, clean interface with easy-to-use dashboards, beautiful visualizations, and integrated capabilities that make annotating tables and collaborating with teammates a breeze. Ensure that your tax data is up to date and confidently tell the story behind your numbers.
  • Paint a vivid financial picture using sophisticated visualizations. Tell the story behind your numbers using sophisticated visualization capabilities. Utilize charts, graphs, dashboards, and storyboards to create a cohesive narrative of your company’s tax posture. Enjoy out of the box features such as key messaging and highlighting capabilities to drive your points home.

Quickly Build Tax Reports Anyone Can Understand

Tax provisioning is often a long and thankless process. Time constraints lead to barebone reports that don’t adequately convey your financial story and cross-team communication to interpret the data is neither centralized nor convenient. But with the right combination of tools, you can spend less time on manual reporting and tax forecasting, facilitate easier cross-team collaboration, and produce visually stunning, easy to understand reports.

With Longview Tax and CXO, your tax team will be able to integrate data from multiple ERPs and data sources and reduce frustration by having a single, centralized reporting and analysis solution to get a holistic view of your company’s financial health. CXO and Longview Tax work together to enable you to visualize your data and tell the story within. Your data will no longer be line after line of numbers on mismatched spreadsheets – it will transform into sophisticated, easy-to-read insights. Ready to see it in action? Request a demo today.

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