SmartSuite for the Controller

Each balance-sheet reconciliation is a record with preparer, reviewer, supporting documents and sign-off date, routed for approval automatically, so review status is visible to you without chasing the team.

Journal entries follow approval paths you define, with the documentation retained against each entry, so accounting policy is enforced in the workflow rather than remembered.

Expense & Reimbursement Management and Purchase Orders & Procurement approvals sit alongside invoices and budgets, so AP exceptions, duplicate requests and policy breaches surface in one place instead of three inboxes.

A reconciliation completed in the close is linked to the SOX control it supports, so the SOX Program Manager's testing draws on the close record itself and you are not producing the same evidence twice.

A control failure in SOX Compliance becomes a corrective action with an owner in your team, a due date and a retest, so the Internal Controls Manager and you are working the same list.

Approved spend, invoices and accruals are visible to the FP&A Manager as the close progresses, so variance analysis starts from the same figures you are closing rather than from an export taken on a different day.

Invoice and billing status, unapproved items and open exceptions roll up by legal entity and consolidate for the group view, so multi-entity reporting does not depend on merging spreadsheets at month end.

Approvals, changes and supporting documents are retained automatically against each transaction and reconciliation, so the External Auditor's request list is answered from records that already exist.

The External Auditor reviews testing results and supporting evidence through controlled access rather than email, and sees remediation progress on prior findings, which shortens year-end fieldwork for your team.

Chief Financial Officer

The Controller runs accounting operations: the monthly, quarterly and annual close, reconciliations, journal approvals and accounting policies, accounts payable and receivable, payroll accounting and treasury operations, and the financial controls over all of it. They provide the SOX evidence for those controls, coordinate deficiency remediation within finance and prepare the financial statements and audit support the external auditor tests under PCAOB AS 2201. The CFO relies on the Controller for close status, aging and control health.

SmartSuite runs the close as a checklist with reconciliations and approvals attached, and the status of every task is visible to the whole finance team rather than held in one person's spreadsheet. The Controller can see which reconciliations are complete, which journals are awaiting approval and where the close is blocked, and the team sees the same picture. Because each close is recorded, the next one starts from a known checklist with the previous cycle's history behind it.

SOX Compliance aligns SOX controls with the close timeline so that control performance and evidence collection happen as part of closing, not as a separate exercise afterwards. Reconciliations and the evidence they produce are linked to the controls they support, which means the SOX Program Manager and the Internal Controls Manager can show an external auditor the reconciliation, the review and the control in one record. Deficiencies found in the close are then remediated within finance with the Controller coordinating.

SmartSuite manages invoice intake, review, coding and approval, billing and exceptions in one place, so the Controller oversees invoices and payment approvals from the same system rather than three. Purchase Orders & Procurement carries the purchase approval that AP later matches against, and Expense & Reimbursement Management handles employee claims through the same approval discipline. Exceptions, such as an invoice without a matching order, are visible as items to resolve, with the Procurement Manager working the same records.

SmartSuite reports close status, aging and control deficiencies to the CFO from the live records, so the Controller's update is the current state of the close rather than a summary written the night before. For the External Auditor, the linked reconciliations, evidence and control records in SOX Compliance mean audit support draws on what finance already maintains. The FP&A Manager works from the same actuals, which keeps the financial view consistent between accounting and planning.

SmartSuite is the record of the work around the ledger, not a replacement for it: the close checklist, the reconciliations, the approvals, the AP and AR workflow, the control evidence and the deficiency remediation. Your accounting system remains the book of record for transactions and balances. To start, a Controller needs the close checklist, the reconciliation list with owners, the control list from the SOX program and the AP and AR approval rules, which most finance teams already hold in spreadsheets.