Tangible Time Savings and Increased Confidence in Reporting with Bloomberg Tax Provision
Challenge: Legacy tax reporting system burdened by manual and time-consuming processes
Upon joining a U.S.-based packaging company, the senior director of tax quickly realized that the legacy tax reporting system was inefficient and hampering her team’s potential. The system relied on antiquated spreadsheets because a prior tax software had never been properly implemented.
“You build in a lot of inherent risk relying largely on tools like Excel,” the senior director of tax said, emphasizing the challenges, particularly in essential tasks such as validating data and reconciling tax amounts.
The lack of a unified system made quarterly and end-of-year reporting “clunky, time-consuming, and manual,” she said.
Other pain points she was looking to solve were integrating federal and state tax provisions and easily providing footnotes in reporting. Accurate tax provision reporting was complicated by the complexities of interdepartmental communication and the necessity to account for multiple international check-the-box entities – all a substantial undertaking for a tax department of five working within a disjointed tax framework.
Strengthening tax controls to meet audit and compliance standards was another of her priorities. However, any new approach had to ensure a rapid learning curve for her small tax staff, and implementation could neither be time-intensive nor relinquish control to an expensive outside firm.
Solution: Easy-to-use software with Big Four-approved reports
At a previous company, the senior director of tax had a negative experience with the implementation of another tax software. The process, overseen by an external firm, extended over two years, and even after completion, the product lacked desired tax reporting features. Notably, issues included the static nature of formulas and data downloaded into Excel, hindering real-time analytics.
Recognizing these pitfalls, and seeking to move beyond primary reliance on Excel, she sought a solution that could facilitate on-the-fly analytics, showcasing the impact on taxes. To achieve this goal, the solution would need to update formulas automatically in all relevant areas and easily download reports into Excel in a readable format – especially beneficial for tasks such as deferred reports. Similarly, the solution would need to generate configurable reports suitable for inclusion in footnotes, for example.
And when it came to implementation, it needed to be quick and easily managed by someone with no prior experience.
Bloomberg Tax Provision answered all these needs. The tax software’s standout features, according to the senior director of tax, are its seamless ability to validate data with ease and conduct analytics through the download of reports into Excel, complete with editable formulas.
“It makes a world of difference,” she said. “I love that you can download them into Excel. They’re very readable, and you can work with them extremely easily.”
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Results: Tangible time savings, validated accuracy, and real-time updates that alleviate the stress of inevitable last-minute tax report adjustments
Bloomberg Tax Provision provided this global company an all-in-one tax reporting solution with a unified, user-friendly platform – implemented in record time. The software was operational in under a month, and almost immediately ushered in significant improvements in areas where the company’s legacy tax reporting infrastructure had fallen short.
The key benefits of the solution include:
Quick learning curve
The tax department had individuals with varying software skills from basic to advanced have embraced the software. “Provision is easy enough that I can catch up to speed easily – I can pull my reports, do my analytics, and I don’t need hours of training,” the senior director of tax said.
Proven accuracy
In case a company is concerned its data is too complex for a single solution, Bloomberg Tax Provision maintains rigorous tax technology standards that withstand audit scrutiny. With this company’s Big Four auditor, “They’ve never raised concerns about the reports or software – there’s literally no downside.”
Similarly, while the tax team frequently employs extra controls, tie-outs, footing, cross-footing, and references between reports, the standard report sent to the auditor has proven more than adequate.
Seamless data transfer
Complementing the company’s use of an external financial reporting tool, Bloomberg Tax Provision’s import templates streamline external data integration into everyday work files. This mapping exercise has seen the seamless transfer of data between systems.
“The ease of use is just amazing, because it’s as simple as using one of the import templates from Provision, integrating that into our work papers, linking everything up and then importing it,” the senior director of tax said.
State and international calculations in a flash
Among additional results, Bloomberg Tax Provision has transformed the once formidable challenge of state calculations. Whereas previously the team was calculating everything in Excel and manually updating the spreadsheet for each state, now the updates and changes flow through automatically.
“This has made a monumental difference,” the senior director of tax said. “Once federal is done, we pretty much instantly have a state provision.”
Likewise, on the international front, the overseas offices can fill out a template and use the import tabs to flow that data into the provision. Throughout, the software maintains a clear audit trail, with transparency across this flow of tax information.
In many cases, creating a new import file isn’t even required – a welcome reprieve when faced with inevitable last-minute tax report modifications.
“There’s not a lot of process,” she said. “It’s very easy to just go in, change a number, run it through, and the reports update.”
Simplified rollovers
Bloomberg Tax Provision also facilitates the seamless rollover of any given report into future reports for estimating purposes. Illustrating this feature, the tax team recently opted to handle the company tax return in-house. Throughout this process, various changes to codes and naming descriptions were needed to address book-to-tax differences – a task simplified with the software.
Following this thorough replication and recreation of final quarter provisions, the team can confidently roll over the data into future reports.
[Request a demo to see how Bloomberg Tax Provision provides practitioners an accurate calculation, intuitive design, and thorough footnotes]
Having overcome the era of fragmented reporting, the company’s story highlights the ability of tax teams to solve challenges with the right tool, one that provides a comprehensive approach to tax provisioning – all for greater operational excellence.
As her team prepared to head into the year-end provision process, the senior director of tax was feeling confident.
“This is probably the first year I’m not panicking,” she said. “We now have simplified things, and I think we’re in a really good spot going into year-end. One of my least concerns is the tool.”
Request a demo to see how Bloomberg Tax Provision software automates calculations across the entire tax provision life cycle and applies adjustments so they’re guaranteed to tie out – all within a clean design that feels intuitive to use.