Prior to pursuing automation with Taxvibes, Versuni’s tax department was challenged with consolidating 65 Excel files and converting them into a journal entry template, resulting in manual corrections and a lengthy financial close. As with many tax teams, handling this increasing number of source files can be very burdensome.

“If a global company uses multiple Excel files for large amounts of locally collected tax information, they should always look for a software solution”

Since implementation, Kanshi has seen the following at Versuni:

• 70% time savings in the tax reporting process; from two weeks to three days
• Finance data quality improvements
• Prevention of manual corrections

Customizing the Longview solution

Transitioning to Longview Tax initially presented some challenges for Versuni. Longview’s out-of-the-box configuration needed adjusting towards the specific needs of their finance and tax users. Taxvibes specialists effectively scaled down the functionalities while keeping user friendliness top of mind.

Being in the first phase of implementation, Versuni also began with only a few material entities per user. This posed the challenge of ensuring data is successfully imported into Longview for non-material entities in the future. Taxvibes assisted in designing a flexible template prepared for including these additional entities in the Longview solution.

Additionally, Versuni faces reporting requirements under both IFRS and Dutch GAAP. Utilizing experience in both tax reporting and automation, the Taxvibes team recommended improvements through a two-step process for IFRS and Dutch GAAP and incorporated these into the Longview interface.

“They were patient in listening to our requirements and said if it’s possible, we will embed it within Longview. That’s one of the best things I appreciate about the team.”

Ongoing advantages of an integrated solution

A tool fit-for-purpose is what both tax and finance departments considering automation should look for. Kanshi warns that if separate systems for tax do not communicate directly with Longview tax provisioning, this requires additional manual Excel uploads rather than streamlining the process. To most efficiently automate, he suggests to companies that “They should go for a solution that is capable of integrating tax provisioning with SAP Analytics Cloud through an API” as is possible within insightsoftware’s solution.