If you’re an investment manager, then you’ll be aware that a big chunk of your or your team’s time is taken up by the creation of different types of financial reporting – a task that is necessary but super demanding.
In fact, this is something that’s overwhelming even in larger companies that have the workforce to do it, but it’s particularly strenuous on the resources of small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs)…
But what if we told you that through software processing automation, you could have multiple types of reports created automatically for you at the click of a button and that the information within could be more complete and accurate?
Don’t worry: we’re not in April, so this is no April Fool’s Joke.
The Different Types of Financial Reporting
All investment managers have to create multiple types of financial reports: this is simply part of the job, and, as we’re sure you know, it’s a crucial task that could have severe repercussions if done incorrectly.
But, for the sake of those who are just starting in the industry or who stumbled upon this article looking for something fun to read, let’s recap on what the different types of financial reporting are, who they’re for, and why they need to be different, shall we?
- Risk Manager: A report for the risk manager often needs the complete raw data from the selling and buying of securities. This is because it’s their job to aggregate data and calculate exposure evaluation.
- Portfolio Manager: Meanwhile, a portfolio manager is responsible for day-to-day investments, so they require historical information from past sales and purchases of securities to understand how different market forces affect different securities. In other words, their report needs to focus on how certain investments fared over the course of a day, a week, a month, a quarter, or a year.
- Analyst: The analyst needs more information on each security with multiple data points. Of course, this could be on a daily or weekly basis, too, but when it comes to analysing the best strategy for the modern way of trading (electronic trading), having more points to work with – such as the intraday prices and trades – gives them a better understanding of their positions.
- Director: The director is obviously very busy, so they don’t have time to read such long and boring reports. Instead, they want a summary of how well the portfolio you’re in charge of is doing.
- Internal Auditor: Finally, when the time comes for the auditor to check that you know what you’re doing and that you’re using the funds you’ve been entrusted with according to any applicable regulation and restriction, they’ll expect to check and reconcile data and report for any data needed.
Doesn’t Excel Already Help With This?
Excel does indeed help with this, but not very much!
As we explained in our previous articles titled Here’s How Much Time Speeding Up Your Financial Reporting Could Save You and How Using Database Query Can Speed Up Financial Reporting & Reduce Errors, while you can use Excel to create, populate, and maintain these databases, doing so manually comes with multiple pitfalls, including time wastage, human errors, and more.
Moreover, this also means that you may end up with multiple copies of the same data and with different stakeholders updating different versions.
This can lead to incomplete data that makes it to your reports… Not to mention that either way, you or someone else will still have to create numerous financial reports for multiple people manually!
Create Different Types of Financial Reporting Automatically!
Using data processing software like AUTOMAN doesn’t just automatically compile your data into one centralised database with scheduled tasks, but it also generates multiple types of reports with different levels of detail and depth!
This, in turn, means that you and your employees can save a considerable amount of time while those who depend on these reports to do their job can rest assured that they have complete and up-to-date information.
Now isn’t that a dream?
But there’s more!
This type of data processing can create reports in different formats, too. All you have to do - with our help, of course - is select the parameters you’d like applied to the data, and the software will automatically format it into an Excel or PDf file, or even into an interactive HTML, giving you the ability to create visual reports and statistics that are easily understandable and nnavigable.
Our Final Thoughts On This Matter
Creating different types of financial reporting doesn’t have to be an arduous and tedious job – at least not one human beings have to do! So give yourself, your team, and your company every advantage by using software that will make the job easier, faster, and better!
Interested? Join us next week for a quick breakdown of the Many & Wonderful Benefits of Data Processing Software!