It’s been almost a decade since Oracle Cloud ERP hit the stands in 2012. As one of the earlier cloud service options for the financial industry, it has built up an eclectic client base over the years from SMBs to major institutions like Thomson Reuters and Bank of America. Within Cloud ERP, there are nine modules companies can invest in, each of which provide different services to different business units across an enterprise.

 
Today, we’ll discuss Oracle Cloud Financials, a widely used module that modernizes accounting and speeds the pace of financial processes for companies across the globe. Cloud Financials enables organizations to close the books faster, process invoices with simplicity, manage revenue, and improve cash flow all from one application. But how? Let’s look at the top six features of Oracle Cloud Financials that deliver the biggest business benefits.

1. Close Manager

Reducing the monthly close cycle is top-of-mind for most financial professionals – and Oracle Cloud Financials can help speed the process. Close Manager offers a visual representation of the close process from start to finish across the entire organization. It automatically identifies subledgers that are not closed and employs real-time monitoring to identify changes in account balances. The account monitor also compares existing data against a baseline to identify any anomalies that might exist so you can step in and manage them.

2. Touchless Supplier Invoice Processing

Cloud Financials takes the strain out of processing invoices. With touchless invoice processing, Intelligence Document Recognition (IDR) completes and validates your invoices using the latest recognition technology. In addition, you receive real-time alerts notifying you of any issues or exceptions that might come up in the process. A comprehensive display of all transactions and single-click approvals or releases relieve you of the time and effort of sorting through these invoices one-by-one.

3. Self-service Customer Billing

These days, customers expect a seamless billing and paying experience that can be completed with minimal effort. Cloud Financials offers a self-service solution where customers can manage their accounts, view bills, and contact customer service all from the comfort of their digital device of choice. From the organizational side, you can highlight notable transactions directly in the work area and use the credit management portal to look up customer credit profiles and reviews.

4. High-performing Collections

Digging further into customer analysis and billing, Cloud Financials allows you to score your customers based on their ability to pay. From there, you can automate your payment request letters and calls to collections agents. You can also assign automated and manual tasks to put your collection strategy into action. See all of your collections data in one place in the collections manager dashboard where you can pull your most valuable KPIs and assess the health of your receivables.

5. Expense Matching

This might seem like a small feature, but it packs a big punch. With expense matching, your application prepopulates expenses originating from credit card transactions so it’s easy to then match them with the corresponding receipts. You can also enter receipts using an iPhone or Android, or use the digital assistant to enter them using voice or text.

6. Fast Reporting

Good reporting is the hallmark of good financial management. Without reports you can rely on, you run the risk of delivering data to your executives that doesn’t reflect the challenges and successes your company is experiencing. Cloud Financials delivers reports with pre-aggregated financial information that can be viewed from a configurable and customized dashboard. You can analyze general ledger account balances across multiple dimensions and use several chart types and interactive tools to view the data. And, of course, as is standard this day and age, you can view your reporting from your mobile device.

Final Thoughts

As a popular module of the Oracle Cloud ERP suite of applications, Oracle Cloud Financials has a lot to offer organizations of all sizes. From faster invoice processing to automated expense matching to comprehensive interactive dashboards, this cloud software can deliver business benefits that are worth the investment.

It’s one thing to read about the upside of Oracle Cloud ERP applications – it’s another to see it in action. One Datavail client that invested in Oracle Cloud Financials was able to speed financial processing, automate data capture, and increase the security of their financial data simply by asking our experienced ERP team to set up features and modules of the software they didn’t know how to implement. This situation is common and leaves companies with tedious processes that could be easily ameliorated from within their own application.

To read more about this story and learn how you can take full advantage of your cloud applications, download our case study, “Community Lender Improves Process Speed and SOX Compliance with Oracle Cloud ERP.”

If you’ve made the move to Oracle Cloud ERP already, you likely already understand the value of each of these application features. If you haven’t, you have a few additional reasons to make the move. Regardless of whether you are pre- or post-implementation, Datavail’s Cloud ERP Team can help. Contact us to discuss how we can help you make the most of your investment.