FP&A solutions provider Abacum and cloud accounting platform AccountsIQ have announced a strategic partnership designed to simplify financial management for companies operating across multiple entities and currencies. This collaboration aims to directly connect consolidated accounting data to financial planning processes, in order to automate information flows and reduce manual processing.
An answer to the challenges facing finance departments
In many growing organisations, Finance and FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis) teams still have to export data from their accounting software, rework it in spreadsheets and then import it into their planning solution. This sequence of steps slows down analysis, increases the risk of errors and requires a significant amount of time.
With this partnership, Abacum and AccountsIQ aim to eliminate this disconnect between accounting and planning. Financial data recorded and consolidated in AccountsIQ is now automatically transferred to Abacum, without requiring manual exports or complex integration development.
A unified financial chain
The integration combines AccountsIQ's financial consolidation capabilities with Abacum's planning and performance management features.
AccountsIQ notably provides multi-entity consolidation, multi-currency management, automatic currency conversions and intercompany transaction reconciliation. This consolidated data then becomes the basis for analysis carried out in Abacum, which enables users to build budgets, forecasts, financial scenarios and real-time dashboards.
The two partners present this approach as a continuous financial chain, covering the entire process from accounting to strategic planning.
A solution designed for international groups
The partnership primarily targets mid-sized companies and high-growth businesses with multiple subsidiaries, located in different countries or operating in multiple currencies.
The organisations concerned can therefore access consolidated data that has already been reconciled and converted before being used in financial performance management processes. This automation accelerates the cycle from financial close to financial forecasting, while limiting manual intervention.
According to the two companies, this approach particularly addresses the needs of companies backed by investment funds, investment banks and international groups facing complex financial structures.
An integration already deployed at GP Bullhound
The partnership is already being used by GP Bullhound, an international investment bank specialising in technology companies.
The integration between AccountsIQ and Abacum was developed to address the group's multi-entity structure. Financial data is now automatically transferred between the two platforms, replacing the manual uploads previously carried out by finance teams.
Ben Ahchinkow, Finance Analyst at GP Bullhound, highlights that the consolidation features, currency conversions and intercompany transaction management offered by AccountsIQ, combined with the integration with Abacum, make it possible to automate data feeds to the FP&A platform and improve the efficiency of financial reporting.
A shared ambition around connected finance
For TJ Dhadwar, Partnerships Manager at Abacum, this collaboration is part of the ambition to transform financial data into actionable real-time insights. He explains that the objective is to replace spreadsheet-based processes with a scalable platform capable of supporting finance teams in their strategic decisions, while eliminating the export and import operations that slow down FP&A processes.
For his part, Darren Cran, CEO of AccountsIQ, believes that this partnership comes at a time of accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence technologies in UK finance departments. According to him, this collaboration extends the platform's use cases beyond accounting by facilitating strategic planning, financial forecasting and reporting. He also indicates that the company intends to continue developing its partner ecosystem in order to offer an increasingly integrated financial chain to international businesses.
Two complementary platforms
AccountsIQ is a cloud accounting platform designed for multi-entity and multi-currency businesses. It offers native financial consolidation and automatic currency conversion capabilities, and is supported by an ecosystem of more than thirty technology partners. The solution is used by more than 35 000 users across more than 85 countries.
Abacum is an FP&A platform designed natively around artificial intelligence. Intended for mid-sized companies and high-growth organisations, it helps finance teams automate reporting, improve forecasting, carry out scenario analysis and strengthen performance management. The solution supports clients in more than 40 countries.
An integration supporting financial performance
By combining their expertise, Abacum and AccountsIQ aim to offer a solution capable of automatically linking accounting, consolidation and financial planning. The two companies therefore seek to help finance departments reduce administrative tasks related to data management and devote more time to analysis, forecasting and decision-making.
source: Abacum
