The processes of closing financial statements and managing Sarbanes-Oxley compliance controls share one key feature: Both involve teams of individuals working off reams of separate spreadsheets and other documents that eventually get boiled down to a final product. With its latest offering, Movaris OneClose, San Jose, Calif.–based Movaris Inc. is closing the gap between these functions, offering a single platform that can show a company's financial staff whether line items in external financial statements or internal management reports can be published, based on successful completion of business processes and compliance requirements.

Movaris has combined its expertise in compliance testing and controls from its previous core product, Certainty, with a broader set of automated finance processes to produce the OneClose product suite. CFOs, controllers and others typically charged with overseeing the process can maneuver through graphic displays of financial statements to assess their progress, and with a few clicks drill down into the details of problem areas. "It unifies financial statements with close tasks and internal controls, so you get a bird's-eye view of everything at the same time," says Frank Mara, vice president of product marketing at Movaris. "Everybody gets to work within the same system, ensuring consistency and greater accuracy, and lowering audit fees."

The platform integrates information from financial consolidation, ERP and other transactional systems with the process of creating the statements, so data can be evaluated within the context of the business processes that produced it. The system can create action plans for any business function where an issue requires attention, track the remediation process and identify responsible employees. The result is a system of record for the close process that can be used by external auditors to quickly determine the quality and effectiveness of financial controls, making for a quicker and less costly audit process. In coming months, Movaris plans to add features to OneClose for tax and treasury functions that feed into financial statement footnotes.