The Industry Landscape
Modernizing Close and Reconciliation in Spreadsheet-driven Finance Environments
Across finance organizations, core close activities, including journal preparation, reconciliations, task management and reporting, are often managed using spreadsheets, e-mail workflows and fragmented data sources. While functional, these environments lack workflow governance, real-time visibility and audit-ready traceability.
For enterprises operating in real estate and joint venture structures, additional complexities, such as “at-share” calculations, portfolio-level grouping and entity-based close dependencies, further increase manual effort and control risk. As regulatory expectations tighten and transaction volumes grow, finance leaders are focusing on end-to-end financial close automation and integrated close governance platforms.
The Client Challenge
Manual Close Lifecycle | Limited Visibility | Control Risk
The client’s finance operations were heavily manual and fragmented across core R2R activities.
Challenges
Manual Journal Postings
Manual journal preparation and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) upload for approximately 750 monthly journals across multiple categories
Spreadsheet Reconciliation
Spreadsheet-based reconciliation processes requiring manual bank downloads, general ledger extraction and error-prone matching
Month-end Close Monitoring
Month-end close monitoring across 2,000+ activities using checklists and ad-hoc coordination
Limited Visibility
Limited reporting visibility due to fragmented data sources and manual consolidation
Lack of Real-time Tracking
Lack of real-time workflow tracking, audit trail and dependency management
Business Impact
The Solution
A Unified Close Governance and Automation Ecosystem
As a first step, WNS leveraged its CFO Advisory Services to assess the client’s existing close architecture and define a phased transformation roadmap. This roadmap prioritized workflow optimization, the standardization of controls and the progressive introduction of automation, while ensuring the finance organization was positioned to integrate future technologies.
The roadmap was operationalized by deploying the TRAC ONE-F HyperApp F&A suite, comprising JE TRAC, RecTRAC, eClose and ReportTRAC, to industrialize the client’s R2R environment. Rather than deploying isolated tools, the engagement focused on creating a single governed lifecycle spanning journal preparation through reconciliation, certification and reporting.
TRAC ONE-F is WNS’ AI-powered Finance Operations suite designed to transform Record-to-Report, Procure-to-Pay and Order-to-Cash into a unified, intelligent ecosystem. Built with embedded automation, Agentic AI and real-time analytics, it enables predictive oversight, touchless processing and audit-ready governance across the finance lifecycle.
- Automated data gathering, computations and working preparation
- Embedded validation rules and maker-checker workflows
- Automated evidence attachment and ERP (JDE) batch posting
- Full audit trail containing timestamps and duplicate detection
- Automated ingestion of Bank Administration Institute (BAI) files and general ledger extracts for closing balance and transactions
- Matching engine with cash and bank reconciliation templates for certification
- Mobile-compatible automated audit packages with embedded supporting documents
- Exception action plans with alerts, notifications and escalations
- Real estate-specific enablement, including “at-share” calculations
- Real-time close visibility across 800+ properties with automated task monitoring and audit
- Integrated query management and dependency controls
- Critical path analysis and probability-of-completion insights
- Dashboard visibility across entities and close activities
- Scheduled and on-demand reporting
- Role-specific access and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) dashboards
- Budget versus actual variance analysis with transaction-level drill-down
- Automated exception reporting and anomaly detection
The deployment followed a structured framework spanning blueprinting, configuration, integration, testing, UAT, go-live and hypercare support. Integration with ERP and source systems was achieved via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) connectors, facilitating seamless data ingestion and automated processing pipelines.
The Outcome
Predictable Close | Embedded Control | Scalable Governance
By replacing fragmented spreadsheets and manual coordination with an integrated, governed and analytics-enabled close ecosystem, the client transitioned from reactive close execution to a predictable, insight-led financial control environment.
Strategic Impact
- End-to-end traceability across the full close lifecycle
- Audit-ready evidence packages generated automatically
- Early identification of close bottlenecks and Service-level Agreement (SLA) risks
- Defined roadmap for expanding straight-through processing and automation coverage
- Scalable platform to support transaction growth and portfolio expansion
Measurable Impact
~0% reduction in journal cycle time with
~0% first-time-right outcomes
0% transaction auto-match rate in reconciliations
0% faster month-end reconciliations
0% reduction in time spent on data ingestion and transformation for reconciliations and reporting
0% reduction in cost for reconciliation activities through automation and role uplift
0% reduction in managerial time spent on close tracking activities
0% adherence to the close calendar with real-time dashboard visibility