Improving the Provision from ExHELL!

Challenge

Using Excel to handle quarterly and year-end provisions caused headaches for New York Life. Just maintaining the multitude of huge and complex workpapers with innumerable formulas and links was a task in and of itself—as was version control and consolidating. When a massive file linked to separate files crashed, the team lost information in the blink of an eye—a major setback with deadlines looming.

New York Life wanted a sustainable solution to streamline the process and allow them to handle tax booking in-house instead of outsourcing to asset management companies.

Solution

New York Life’s first order of business: connect Corptax accounts to the general ledger and use CSC Corptax® Data Exchange Manager to import historical data from Excel into Corptax. Next, identify ‘entities’ and ‘lines of business’ in Corptax and determine which adjustments to automate and which to handle with CSC Corptax® Office workpapers. Lastly, build a journal entry template to upload to their general ledger system easily.

Results

Using standard Corptax reports, the New York Life team helped their business units better understand the provision process. By allowing the system to automate steps, they now:

• Automate 60% of adjustments and accelerate work by using standardized workpapers and letting Corptax Office push and pull data
• Eliminate outsourcing costs by doing monthly and quarterly tax booking for the nonlife insurance companies in-house for the first time
• Cut turn-around time on entries by almost one week—reducing overtime and boosting morale
• Save eight hours every month by automating trial balance import

Accelerating Compliance with Corptax Automation

Challenge

Intensive manual work bogged down Baxter International Inc.’s compliance cycle. General ledger data required manipulation in Excel® before importing to Corptax. It took multiple trial balance loads to post Ms and E&P adjustments. Updating automated adjustments and reconciling data ate up time and introduced risk. To help meet aggressive deadlines, the team brought outside consulting help on board.

This process was especially painful when:

• Reviewing year-over-year adjustments made on Forms 5471 and sourcing foreign and domestic amounts
• Verifying eliminations entries net to 0
• Confirming Corptax book balances tied back to HFM
• Refreshing foreign amounts for all entities when running international calculations
• Printing international reports to support the return

Solution

Baxter leverages automation in complementary Corptax solutions to:

• Create rules with data import to tax sensitize GL data before loading into Corptax
• Post Ms and E&P adjustments when importing trial balances automatically with CSC Corptax® BOTS
• Package 5471 reports for posting and printing returns automatically with Corptax BOTS
• Create a direct connection to data sources using CSC Corptax® Office to reconcile book to E&P adjustments for all entities at one time

Results

Corptax automation transformed Baxter’s compliance process and they continue to find new ways to eliminate manual work with Corptax BOTS. Today, Baxter:

• Posts auto-adjustments and prints 200+ international reports in 2 hours vs. 80 hours
• Prepares 5471 returns in 25% less time
• Reconciles data in 1 week vs. 7 months
• Eliminates costs for 1000 hours of outside consulting work
• Spots anomalies and compares data for multiple years quickly
• Frees up time to focus on the Transition Tax calculation and other impacts of tax reform

Driving Tax Process Change with Analytics

Challenge
ITT Inc. grapples with an offline Excel®-based ETR model to process data for analysis. Constant and cumbersome data import, export, and updates limit the ability to perform analysis during tight close windows. Further, the E&P review completed as part of tax reform is entirely manual and requires export from Corptax to Excel and even more data manipulation to understand outliers.

ITT needed a fast and flexible way to view and analyze quarterly provision data, and to readily evaluate tax planning opportunities related to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Solution

ITT implemented a tax rate analytics solution and an international analytics solution with the assistance of CSC Corptax® Professional Services. Using CSC Corptax® Office Point of View (POV) and standard Excel functionality, the team now:

• Accesses real-time data with a click through a refreshable, direct connection
• Eliminates the need to constantly extract data and manipulate it manually
• Drills down to lowest level of detail to slice and dice data as needed
• Easily identifies items for further review
• Visualizes data analytics based on roles and according to preferences

Results

With immediate access to key provision and international data, ITT configures their own analytics and further enhances their tax processes. With a direct connection between Corptax and their analytics programs, data is easily refreshed, giving the team current and trusted data to use for multiple processes and planning.

The tax rate analytics solution:

• Provides a new analytic with a direct, refreshable data connection to Corptax
• Makes identifying key tax rate drivers fast and easy
• Allows comparative analysis to prior period/baseline to highlight abnormal trends

The international analytics solution:

• Evaluates historical and current year E&P on an entity-by-entity basis
• Enables historical E&P analysis and helps identify outliers and key drivers for Transition Tax
• Reveals opportunities for more effective tax planning

Automation Frees Up 500 Hours and Facilitates Data Reuse

Challenge

Five members of Smithfield Food’s international tax team, including expensive loan staff, had to work nights and weekends for three weeks straight to organize and upload data from 100 tax packages from various sources and legacy general ledger systems. With packages arriving at all hours from all over the world—including packages from joint ventures—they wanted a better way to tackle data collection and to structure multiple purchase accounting adjustments during compliance season crunch-time.

Solution

Using CSC Corptax® Office functionality to control the process, Smithfield now spends less than five minutes per tax package.
Automating the process allows the team to:

• Update permanent and temporary adjustments and manage changes quickly and easily
• Keep recurring adjustments consistent across periods
• Accelerate compliance work and improve GILTI by imputing E&P adjustments during provision season
• Expedite the tested income and loss calculation for GILTI inclusion

Results

Streamlining a formerly cumbersome process:

• Frees up 500 hours for other essential work
• Eliminates virtually all transcription errors for peace of mind
• Allows Smithfield to maintain tighter SOX controls, further reducing risk

Plus, the ability to use provision data for the compliance lifecycle without rekeying eliminates even more time and risk—and automating steps provides more flexibility to integrate tax reform into the process going forward.

Automating Tax Adjustments for Speed and Accuracy

Challenge

Responsible for federal, state, and local reporting for 33 entities, Technicolor’s 5-member compliance staff pushed and pulled data to and from Corptax manually—including book and tax adjustments. To make this laborious and error-prone process even worse, preparers used different adjustment codes for the same adjustment, causing reconciliation problems when consolidating.

With more and more work hitting the tax department due to changes such as tax reform, Technicolor needed to accelerate and standardize the tax adjustment process ASAP.

Solution

Using seamless two-way dataflow provided by CSC Corptax® Office, the team now pushes and pulls book and tax adjustments at the touch a button. The Corptax Office template for M adjustments allows Technicolor to standardize Ms for all entities at the same time, and to immediately retrieve data from Corptax to ensure all adjustments are accounted for and correct.

Results

Technicolor’s parent company in France appreciates the tax team’s efficiency gains and the controls in place for entering and retrieving data. Technicolor:

• Takes mere minutes instead of four days to transfer spreadsheet data to Forms 4562 and 4797
• Cuts the overall adjustment process from 2 weeks to under 2 days, and dramatically improves accuracy