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Anyone willing to share improvements made to their SEC Reporting Process through Workiva?

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My company is currently exploring opportunities within Workiva to make our SEC Reporting process more efficient. Can anyone share similar experiences or process improvements made?
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12 comments

Date Votes
  • Min Gao

    We imported our comprehensive list (including each reference id's status - e.g. templates received/prepared/reviewed) into Spreadsheet and linked the comprehensive list to a customized powerpoint dashboard in Wdesk for the outstanding items by functional groups and a pie chart for overall progress. 

    Also, we are in progress of automation process. We are trying to link numbers from the exported oracle trail balances directly to 10Q/K projects in Wdesk. 

    Will follow this post for more updates about process improvements!! Thank you for the great question.

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  • Jillian Benson

    We have also created a 'validation' cross reference between numbers that should agree, we check this frequently to ensure rounding hasn't caused a problem. I highly recommend taking the time to create this. We have total column that should be zero, and added conditional formatting so if it's anything other than zero the cell is red so we can quickly open and look for red.This is a small snapshot of what our workbook looks like:


    Another small improvement was making our line item descriptions dynamic. We use a formula to change any line descriptions that change based on the results being positive or negative. This saves a lot of time checking/changing when results are moving. There is a full post on this in the community. 

    I also recommend adding automatic rounding into your spreadsheets, this felt a big win so we spent less time chasing $1 rounding. 

    A HUGE improvement was GL integration - this is a large project but well worth it for us.

    5
  • Lily Keasler

    Hi Jillian, When you say "automatic rounding" what exactly do you mean by that? We are always chasing the $1 and I would be interested how you've automated. 

    thanks!

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  • Jillian Benson

    Sure, in column B we have the "actual" data, with a sum (for the this example $4,838), and then a check to the IS of $4,836. In column C we select a line item we are comfortable round and setup a formula that takes the IS balance less actual data total which would result in $2. In column D we sum column B and C, and then column D becomes our reported data. 

    Let me know if this helps or if you have other questions.

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  • Michelle Marosz
    Can you share more about your process for integrating your GL?
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  • Jillian Benson
    Our GL is connected to spreadsheets, so when we make an entry our documents automatically populate. I can't express how much time this has saved. It's a large project to setup but absolutely worth it for us. 
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  • Nicki Parrish

    Jillian,

    Do you have any recommendations on the process of connecting the GL to feed spreadsheets?

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  • Jillian Benson

    We did it over a year ago but a few things I can remember that were important. Working closely with the Workiva team. We spent the time building formulas with them so that once the connection was handed over to us we knew the ins and outs of the spreadsheets. 
    Formatting isn't as pretty in Spreadsheets so we had to let that go and not waste time trying to change formatting.
    We created a 'manual inputs' tab and anything that needs to be hardcoded goes in here, everything else must be formula driven on all other tabs so we don't waste time searching and trying to remember where we need to make manual updates. 
    Take the time build historical sections in each tab so comparative data pulls easily. 

    I hope this helps :) 

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  • Nicki Parrish

    It does! Thanks so much!

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  • Danica Athanassiou

    We created a double check for restated or reclassed amounts within our 10-Q and 10-K documents. We export the XBRL All Facts Report from the current period and prior period filings. Then create a pivot table to analyze prior period amounts disclosed in our current filing document. After sifting through a couple false positives, this highlights amounts that have been restated or reclassed within our current filing. It helps us keep an inventory summary list of the restated amounts we know of.

    This check only includes sections that have XBRL tagging, so we still have to manually check for sections that are not tagged with XBRL.

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  • Kim Floriani
    We've setup many checks in our workbooks to ensure things that should tie around are tying around.  We also make sure to keep very "clean" workbooks and delete out historical information (to avoid erroneous numbers being utilized).  We also use color coding to ensure we know what has been updated, status of review and what is final.  
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  • John Thompson

    Some other suggestions here that were more workbook focused: https://support.workiva.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360051842811-Does-anyone-have-any-workbook-design-principles-they-can-share-

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