What is corporate disclosure? It is the process of reporting financial and non-financial information about your company’s business over a set period of time. It may also include any projections or goals your business has for the future as well. These reports become publicly available so that stakeholders and prospective investors know everything required to make informed decisions. Many companies are required by law to complete disclosures. Your team can complete your disclosures through disclosure management.
What is disclosure management? It is the process of several people from within your company working together to create, review, and submit disclosure documents. While having a team of people completing the disclosure report makes the process more efficient, it can still be tedious compiling and organizing all the information that must be included. Using disclosure management software helps ease the workload. In this blog, we will describe some of the solutions for good disclosure reporting, including details on what disclosure management software is and how to improve your disclosure reports overall. Let’s dive in.
What Is Disclosure Management Software?
Disclosure management software is a program that helps you create disclosure reports. With it comes:
- Collaboration: This software gives your team the ability to work on different parts of the report at the same time
- Version Control: You can see which changes were made and when, for auditing purposes
- Data Storage: This software gives you a place to store all of the information you need to complete a report in one place, including data from other sources.
Fluence Disclosure Management powered by Sturnis365 is one example of disclosure management software. What sets it apart from other disclosure management platforms is that it is an add-in for Office365. You don’t have to spend hours learning to use a new tool because your knowledge of Office365 will translate. And when you update your data in another source, Fluence will automatically update it in your report in real time. Not only will this save you time, but it will also ensure that your report is as accurate as possible.
Once you have the disclosure management tools to create high-quality reports, you should make sure that the report itself is well-written and organized for easier reading.
How Can I Improve My Disclosure?
To improve your disclosure reports, you should make sure you only include what is necessary to meet the disclosure requirements for corporations and present that information in a clear and concise way. Let’s take a look at how to do that.
- Find disclosure requirements. If you are doing an external report, you will have to make sure that you include everything that your regulatory body requires, whether it is the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States, the European Central Bank, the European Banking Authority, the European Securities and Markets Authority, or some other regulatory body. You can usually find these requirements on those agencies’ websites.
- Make clear goals. When you complete a disclosure report, you should have clear goals in mind. Think of it as a presentation instead of an exam. You want to present your data in a way that your stakeholders can understand, and that means having a point to your report that you write towards.
- Look at other disclosure reports. If you look at the disclosure reports completed by other companies within your industry, you can get ideas of how to complete your report and what information to include. Determine what others are doing well in their reports and make changes to improve your own.
- Stick to the important information. A disclosure report provides a lot of information to sort through. Make it easier for your stakeholders to read by only including what is necessary to meet the requirements of your regulatory bodies or what you decide to include in any internal disclosures.
- Avoid repetition. Another way to make your report easier to read is to avoid repetition. This will make your report less confusing for stakeholders to read and tighten up the language of the report.
- Use visuals. They are a great way to present your findings and can also help with tightening the language of your report. Instead of spending paragraphs describing the data your company gathered, create a graph or chart that can do it more clearly.
- Stay organized. Present your data and information in a logical way. A good rule of thumb is to put the most important information at the beginning of your report and save the rest for later, assuming this complies with any regulatory requirements. You can also stay organized during the completion process by setting deadlines for each part of the report.
- Use plain language. Avoid jargon when possible. If you do use it, explain what it means so that your stakeholders understand what you are trying to get across to them.
- Collaborate with team members. Working with people from your team will allow you to complete your disclosure report quicker. With Fluence, you can assign team members to specific tasks and monitor progress on those assignments.
Fluence: Your Disclosure Management Solution
Fluence is the solution to more efficiently complete disclosure reports. We offer the following features to help you in the reporting process:
- Ability to map narrative financial inputs
- Automation of report production and distribution
- Leverage of out of box controls, visibility, and an inverse design
- Collaboration on report production and distribution
- Access to our software from a single secured source on any device and collaboration tools that remove roadblocks from the disclosure management process
- A Datasource Dashboard that shows the data refresh status so you can make sure that everything is up-to-date
- Version timestamps that give you and your team clarity on what has been added or changed, when, and by whom
- Several formatting options so that you can submit your report in whatever form you need
If you are ready to explore how our software works, schedule a demo with us today.
