Sallila Energia builds unified financial management: Finadeck safeguards historical data through a system change and streamlines group reconciliations

Sallila Energia Group has developed its group accounting, reporting, budgeting and cash flow forecasting with Finadeck. Next, Finadeck will also play a key role in renewing the subsidiaries' financial management systems: historical data from Visma L7 will stay available and comparable with the data in the new financial management software. The group also expects Finadeck's new intercompany reconciliation feature to save significant time in month-end closes and in resolving discrepancies.

A century-old energy group needs a unified view of its finances

Founded in 1914, Sallila Energia Group works in electricity generation, transmission and energy services. The parent company Sallila Energia Oy fully owns Sallila Sähkönsiirto Oy and owns 70 percent of Sallila Energiapalvelut Oy. Sallila Sähkönsiirto handles local electricity distribution, and Sallila Energiapalvelut provides control room, metering and ICT services.

The starting point: fewer helper spreadsheets, more flexible reporting

Previously, the group's consolidated financial statements, consolidation, budgeting, forecasting and reporting were handled in other software. Building reports for changing needs sometimes required help from customer support. The subsidiaries wanted to develop how cost center profitability is tracked and grouped, and to make financial management more consistent.

Budgeting was mostly done in helper spreadsheets. Depreciation of fixed assets, loan interest and repayments, and the effects of investments required manual work, which made balance sheet and cash flow forecasts especially hard to build. The group also wanted to automate its already working consolidation further.

Finadeck brings reporting, budgeting and group accounting together

Sallila chose Finadeck, which brings BI reporting, budgeting, forecasts, cash flow planning and consolidated financial statements together in one software. With implementation training, the group can build the reports and key figures its changing reporting needs call for. Reports were set up for the group, its companies, cost centers and cost center groups.

Cost centers imported from Visma L7 were grouped in Finadeck, which made profitability easier to follow. Budget drivers built into Finadeck allow profit budgeting directly in the software at cost center level. Finadeck rolls the budgets up to company and group level. With fixed asset and loan data and simulations of balance sheet items, balance sheet and cash flow forecasts can also be prepared, taking planned investments and their financing into account.

Visma L7 history stays comparable after the system change

Sallila Energia Group's subsidiaries will use Finadeck as a store for historical data when they move from Visma L7 to new financial management software. The aim is to make sure that data from the old system's financial years stays comparable in reporting, down to cost object level.

Before the move, Sallila fills in an Excel sheet of account and cost object mappings. It records the new counterparts of the accounts whose numbers change in the new financial management software. The subsidiaries also define the cost object mappings: which cost object in the new system corresponds to each cost object in Visma L7.

Before the integration with the new financial management software is switched on, Finadeck records in its database that Visma L7 is the data source for every financial year transferred to Finadeck before the first year read from the new software. The new software's integration is then switched on, and the changes in the mapping table are applied to the entry rows imported from Visma L7. This way the old historical data can be shown in a form that is comparable with the new chart of accounts and cost object structure.

The solution reduces the need to keep the old system running just to report on financial history, and supports ongoing comparison across the system change. The implementation schedule and final effects will be confirmed during the project.

New IC reconciliation promises significant time savings in the month-end close

Sallila Energia Group sees Finadeck's new intercompany reconciliation feature as a significant opportunity to speed up the month-end close and find possible discrepancies more efficiently. The aim is to make comparing items between group companies more transparent and to reduce manual investigation. The expected time savings are not yet measured results.

In Finadeck, the accounts for intercompany transactions are already set to be eliminated automatically. Vouchers for calculating non-controlling interests are also created automatically once the group structure and the required settings are in place. The new reconciliation feature completes this, especially in quality assurance of the month-end close.

A turnkey implementation and the next steps

The implementation began with a joint specification covering the accounts to be eliminated, group reports, key figures, the reporting structure and the budgeting and forecasting processes. Finadeck also provided the Excel templates for importing fixed asset and loan data. Once the required entries are made, the key statements of the annual report are produced in the consolidated financial statements template, and the notes can be completed in the software.

Further development focuses on a controlled transfer of historical data, keeping it comparable through the change of financial management software, and putting the new reconciliation feature to use. The subsidiaries can also automate their fixed asset accounting in Finadeck.

All the old, familiar reports were in Finadeck from the very start on a turnkey basis, which made the implementation easy and smooth. Building their own reports has felt easy and logical. The user interface is user-friendly and reliability is excellent.

The result: more manageable financial control, also through change

Finadeck has unified and automated Sallila Energia Group's consolidation, reporting, budgeting and forecasting, and reduced manual steps. Next, the software's role grows to keeping financial history through the system renewal. Together with the new IC reconciliation, this supports the goal of making the monthly finance processes smoother and comparison data reliably usable.