Longview Tax Out-of-the-Box Provision Solution Nets Quick Wins for Tax Reporting

Business Challenge

GATX realized that a tax technology solution was needed to replace Microsoft Excel, so they started a selection process. The challenges of using multiple spreadsheets to manually input data, review formulas and links, and the frustration of repeating the process every time there was a change to book data became too great. The finance team was putting in a new accounting system and they wanted to standardize with tax. Lastly, the auditors were starting to take a more detailed look at the data, including ticking and tying, so they began asking to see the Excel spreadsheets to support the reported results. GATX decided to be proactive, as it was only a matter of time before the auditors focused more on uncovering errors or lack of internal controls instead of reviewing the results, so they engaged Longview to implement Longview Tax quickly.

The Objectives

Move away from an Excel-only solution to:

• Standardize reports across the business segments
• Eliminate Excel-based schedules
• Easily report in multiple ways (accounting entity code, business segment, and legal entity)
• Leverage data between the provision and the tax return instead of “starting over”
• Efficiently and accurately calculate return to provision adjustment and tax basis balance sheet
• Quickly respond with results when accounting data changes
• Automate as many book/tax difference as possible

The Solution

With Longview’s easy to implement product, GATX quickly implemented:

• Out-of-the-Box Longview Tax Provision including Return to Provision and Tax Basis Balance Sheet
• Integration between Longview Tax and GATX’s accounting ledger system and Corptax compliance system

Why Longview?

GATX reviewed the tax technology market and selected Longview Tax over the competition because of:

• Multidimensional enterprise database that provides a consolidation platform for unlimited data storage and drill-down/roll-up transparency to data
• User friendly/Intuitive User interface
• Out-of-the-Box Provision solution
• Flexibility in reporting and automation options

Benefits

With the implementation of Longview Tax, GATX has benefited by:

• Increased efficiency by cutting the close timing by more than 50% in the first year
• Increased standardization across the tax process and with finance
• Improved transparency and internal controls by centralizing all data in one database
• Flexible reporting
• Risk mitigation by eliminating Excel-only solution