This document discusses challenges with traditional manual financial reporting processes used by many state and local agencies. Relying on spreadsheets and in-house software, agencies spend countless hours developing annual reports which are prone to human errors. The document advocates automating the reporting process using a web-based platform to eliminate inefficiencies, improve accuracy, and allow real-time collaboration. This would allow agencies to focus on analysis rather than manual data entry and formatting.

1. Streamlining the Financial
Reporting Process
Cut manual reporting practices, so your team can spend time analyzing and presenting
quality data.
Every year state and local agencies spend countless
hours developing a comprehensive picture of their
financial situation. A considerable amount of time goes
into financial reporting—everything from developing
annual financial documents to budget reports, interim
reports and monthly management reports. For agencies
to govern effectively, it’s critical that they have accurate,
up-to-date, comprehensive and timely financial reports
backing their decisions.
Too often state and local agencies rely on manual data
processes when it comes to preparing their financial
reports and records. According to a Gartner report, up
to 80 percent of budget officers—particularly those in
smaller governments—continue to rely on spreadsheets
and in-house software to help prepare their budgets.
While these methods are familiar and have proven suc-
cessful in the past, the reliance on manual data processes
in financial reporting today is concerning because of the
inefficiencies and inaccuracies associated with entering
and editing information by hand. When the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed the funding
of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative—a project to
protect and restore the largest fresh, surface water in the
world—they identified data errors in nearly 20 percent
of its FY10-FY12 projects. Most of the errors were in the
agency funding amounts, which officials have attributed
to uncorrected, unintentional data entry mistakes caused
by human error.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. In 2011,
a spreadsheet malfunction led a Massachusetts town to
overestimate its budget by $1.5 million. A similar situ-
ation in Kern County, California undervalued its taxable
real estate by $1.26 billion. Despite the best efforts of
accountants working to ensure documents are complet-
ed accurately and in a timely manner, financial reports
have simply become too complex to be executed using
traditional manual reporting methods.
What is the Traditional Reporting Method?
Mandated by Governmental Accounting Standards
Board (GASB) accounting standards and SEC Rule 15c2-
12, government agencies are required to keep up with
rigorous financial methods that are under heavy scrutiny
by auditors and citizens alike. For state and local govern-
ment, the largest lift often comes from the development
of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR),
a compiled set of government financial statements from
the previous year. Several hundred pages in length, the
CAFR takes months to complete and requires a team of
highly trained accountants to pull in financial information
from a variety of sources and datasets.
“Over the years, some things have changed with
financial reporting, and some things have remained
the same,” says Relmond van Daniker, former CEO of
the Association of Government Accountants (AGA)
and Executive Director of NASACT. “They should
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2. have changed, but they didn’t, and now reporting is
needlessly complicated and, in my opinion, doesn’t
always do what it should. But still it remains the
accepted norm.”
While the CAFR is intended to provide a compre-
hensive picture of a state or municipal government’s
financial situation, the complexity of its requirements
can make the reporting extremely complicated to
assemble. This is compounded by the limitations
of traditional reporting software, which can be
inconsistent when it comes to extremely complex links
and equations. In fact, one of the biggest challenges
is transferring over the linked and formula-driven
information to word processing documents. The task
of tracking down changes—the “ticking and typing”
process—can often times be the most tedious and
time-consuming work.
“The model the GASB board created was not
structurally vertical, meaning there are now four
levels where there used to be maybe one or two,”
says Teresa Beckstrand, Controller of the Salt Lake
City Corporation. “The problem I found was that now
we’re linking up and down—sideways, hierarchically
and in a circle. It’s almost like a spider web. As soon as
that standard came about, we began losing some of
our links. We’d have five different links getting to one
number, and the links had a tendency to break. They
just got too complicated, I think.”
Frequent changes to the GASB requirements also add
to the difficulties of developing reports manually across
tabs, sheets and datasets. Since requirements differ
slightly each year, the numbers linked and calculated for
the CAFR one year might not necessarily be prepared
the same way when developing next year’s report. In
addition, the length and scope of the report can make
fixing these pieces, using traditional reporting methods,
an enormous lift in terms of time and labor. Gathering
data, consolidating information and creating docu-
mentation and presentations for financial reporting can
take months of manual work with current tools, which
is why accounting departments are hesitant to redo the
document unless absolutely necessary.
“As new standards come out, you don’t want to
reinvent the wheel, so you’d make these little adjust-
ments for these small things that were the exception of
the rule,” Beckstrand says. “The
problem is, as time went on, we
had more and more of these
exceptions that weren’t link-
ing properly. It builds on
itself a little bit, because
nobody wants to redo the whole thing every year.”
Given the increasing technicality of financial reports,
it’s especially important that state and local agencies
have strong version control practices that allow experts
to see what numbers were changed, and when.
However, tracking data updates and viewing edits is
virtually impossible when using traditional methods. This
is especially true when working in a team, where one
person will edit, save and email an updated report to
another colleague, who will then modify the document
and pass it along. While there are some version control
mechanisms incorporated into traditional reporting
software, it is not comprehensive enough to show the
full picture of changes made over time. In other words,
if an error is detected, it’s nearly impossible to know
anything about how it occurred, or how it might have
impacted other elements of the report.
Finally, because presentations are formatted by
hand, financial experts spend hours manually inserting
information from spreadsheets to presentations or
documents, then saving it in the correct format. Not
only is this time-consuming, it also further opens up
reporting to human error as it’s possible to insert data
errors after the fact, even from a spreadsheet with
entirely correct information.
“We want to spend our time making sure the
numbers are correct rather than making sure that they
are in the right column or page,” Beckstrand says.
“We’ve got highly trained CPAs and professionals, and
that’s not where we want them to spend their time, but
that’s unfortunately often what has to happen.”
“We want to spend our
time making sure the
numbers are correct
rather than making
sure that they are in the
right column or page.”
Teresa Beckstrand, Controller, Salt Lake City Corporation

3. Streamlining Reporting Capabilities
with Automation
To maintain compliance and transparency throughout
the reporting process while accessing improved
efficiencies, agencies need to look beyond developing
reports manually. By automating the reporting process,
organizations can eliminate many of the pain points
of traditional financial reporting processes, such as:
version control, manually editing and relinking data,
and formatting reports according to strict guidelines.
Part of the challenge is adoption. The public sector can
be resistant to change, especially given financial and
resource constraints.
Wdesk by Workiva provides agencies greater flexi-
bility from an adoption and implementation standpoint.
The platform allows state and local agencies to effec-
tively collect and manage data for accurate, traceable
reporting. By consolidating all programs necessary for
reporting into one platform, Wdesk allows government
agencies to keep all their data in one workspace.
Agency experts can live-link their collected data in
complex relationships without links breaking. They can
also track the data back to a single source with a full
audit trail. With Wdesk, individuals can simultaneously
edit, review and author reports without having to email
updated versions to each other. Granular permissions
can be set to enable controlled collaboration across
teams, assigning sections to individuals and ensuring
responsibility and accountability throughout the
reporting process. And, because Wdesk has the look
and feel of previously existing systems, it’s easy for
departments to implement. This all speeds up the
publishing cycle, allowing reports to be created in a
fraction of the time.
“When choosing a new solution, I’m looking at the
ease with which you link data, the ability to review
changes, the flexibility to adapt to new reporting
requirements and then, of course, the ease of use,”
Beckstrand says. “If the system is complicated, doesn’t
mirror common knowledge and requires a lot of time
learning, that doesn’t work.”
Rethinking Financial Reporting Today
When you switch to a platform that is web-based, users
can easily link data, automate formatting and facilitate
both version control and collaboration, so that govern-
ment can produce error-free, quality reports. Today, more
than 65 percent of Fortune 500 companies trust Wdesk
to support their financial reporting processes. State and
local organizations face similar reporting challenges, and
likewise stand to benefit if they move away from
outdated reporting processes—especially given the
rapidly shifting nature of accounting standards.
“The question to be raised is: Why do we do
what we do?” van Daniker says. “And the answer is
that we do it to provide information for people who
make decisions.”
Not only is it important for agen-
cies to increase the transparency of
data, both internally and externally,
but the timeliness of reporting
matters too. By simplifying the
reporting process, Wdesk allows
agencies to increase efficiencies
and maintain financial reporting
that is repeatable and sustained
over time.
Workiva (NYSE:WK) created Wdesk, a cloud-based productivity platform for enterprises to collect, link, report, and
analyze business data with control and accountability. Used by thousands or organizations, Wdesk helps public sector and
government agencies meet compliance standards with synchronized data, controlled collaboration, granular permissions,
and a full audit trail. See what we can do for you at workiva.com/government.
“If the system is
complicated, doesn’t
mirror common
knowledge and requires
a lot of time learning,
that doesn’t work.”
Teresa Beckstrand, Controller, Salt Lake City Corporation