Preparing to Go Public? An Integrated System Will Put You on the Right Track

On having an integrated system that will put you on the right track - Taking your company public may have seemed like a distant dream back in your start-up days when you were in a mad scramble just to make payroll. But now that an IPO might be in your not-too-distant future, you need a system to integrate the necessary audit, financial management, compliance and security support to help you excel as a listed company.

Simple programs like QuickBooks, which may have served you well up until now, cannot handle the higher level of sophistication necessary to meet your growing financial management needs and SEC requirements. It’s time for an enterprise-grade financial management solution.

How can an integrated system help you with your IPO?

Audit Tracking

Entry-level accounting solutions do not offer enough detail for public companies. Without the necessary functionality to keep someone from going into the system and deleting a transaction, there is no trace of who made the edit.

Because a big part of going public centers around audit trails and tracking, you need a system that creates a detailed record of every transaction, allowing you to know the person, the date, the time, and the action taken. These are the types of system notes you’ll need to meet SEC requirements.

Defining Roles and Responsibilities

An integrated system also allows you to set roles and responsibilities so only certain people can take certain actions within the financial management system, establishing security restrictions and controls for compliance.

You control who has the ability to edit, delete or view records. These types of security measures become increasingly important as your company grows.

There are additional benefits to an integrated system:

• Bring together financial reporting, compliance workflows, and other functions can help save staff time during the IPO process, saving time and money in your day-to-day financial and compliance reporting.
• Automate processes to help save staff time for financial calculations necessary for the company's IPO.
• Build Sarbanes-Oxley compliance rules into your financial process automation, without spending time and money on third-party programmers.
• Advanced revenue reporting helps companies manage their revenue recognition and billing processes.

If your company is going public, or if you’re contemplating an acquisition, you need to be able to provide the required management reporting information from your financial statements, access income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements in an auditable format, and have it at your fingertips so you’re ready for your IPO.

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