One is Clarity Systems’ brand-new Financial Statement Reporting module. It can accept data from an Excel file, ERP or general ledger system, put it through the proper workflows, and generate 10K, 10Q, board book and other financial documents. It provides an audit trail for the regulators and reusable templates. This is a new area for Clarity, which in the past has focused on corporate performance management software. The new module works with the rest of the Clarity 6 suite, so that the tasks of planning, analyzing and reporting on performance, including regulatory reports, can all be tied together.

The other is Movaris’ two-year-old, more fully featured OneClose software. In addition to automating the final reporting processes of quarterly and yearly financial closes, the vendor provides Account Reconciliation software that automates the process of comparing account information drawn from various sources, flagging variances, and making corrections, arguably the hardest and least desirable work involved in closing the books. One out of every five SEC material weakness filings are due to account reconciliation mistakes. Options backdating, for instance, is the hot issue at the moment for the SEC and many of its subjects.

“These products are a real timesaver for a lot of firms,” notes Jim Haggerty, analyst at AMR Research. “There’s probably a need out there for this kind of software. Companies can get by without it, but wouldn’t it be great to do pushbutton reporting?”