Quarter-end: five source systems, one return, a crunch week

The question this file answersHow much of my team's quarter goes into copying figures between systems before anyone even reads the return?

Fits: banks, insurers and regulated firms filing on monthly or quarterly cycles from several source systems — the finance playbook gives cycle frequency, not a document count; the audit counts yours.

Not for: firms whose returns already come straight out of a reporting platform with no manual consolidation — the assembly you would be paying us to shorten does not exist.

Typical day

What the desk looks like today

Typical, from the finance playbook — not a client's day. Returns run on monthly, quarterly and annual cycles, each ending in a crunch; the playbook gives no volume beyond that. Data is exported from the core system and the ledger, pasted into the regulator's template, reviewed, submitted — then corrected after validation. The people doing the pasting should be reading the numbers. It hurts in the last week before the deadline, worst when a source field changed since last cycle and nobody noticed until the totals stopped tying.

What changes

What Monday looks like after

Five working days before the deadline, not one. The draft return exists: figures in, tie-outs run, the handful of lines that failed validation listed with their source values side by side, a draft commentary underneath. The team's week goes to those lines and to the paragraph that explains a movement — not to exports and paste. The sign-off is still a name on a page, and the person signing has read the return rather than assembled it. You get a log for every figure: which system, which extract, which rule it passed. EY's 2023 survey is about preparation time across many firms; the number is above, and it is theirs.

Typical, not a measured client result. Every figure here comes from the playbook source named below.

~40–60%

less preparation time — EY Global RegTech Survey (2023)

Before: data is pasted from several systems into templates in a crunch week. After: EY (2023) reports 40–60% less preparation time — sign-off is still a name on a page.

Where this number comes from

EY "Global RegTech Survey" (2023) reports that firms using AI for regulatory reporting reduce preparation time by 40–60%; Gartner (2023) puts 60%+ of regulatory reporting activities within reach of current technology. Industry figures, not our measurement. Playbook range 50–70%.

What we install

What we put in front of the systems you already run

The regulator's template and your core systems — SAP, Oracle, Temenos, FIS, Finastra or the one you run — are not what we touch. We add an assembly step before review:

the figures each return needs are pulled from the source systems, through APIs where core banking allows, otherwise from the extracts your team produces
the template is populated field by field
the validation rules you apply — tie-outs, period-on-period movements, the regulator's published checks — are run, every failure listed with the two numbers that disagree
the commentary sections are drafted from the figures for a person to edit
every step is logged with its reasoning — your auditor will ask.

First scope: the return with the worst crunch.

What stays human — and what this will not do

Working out what a new rule means for the return. The signature. Chasing an exception to its cause. Letters to the regulator.

What can go wrong — and what we do about it

A field renamed or redefined in a source system between cycles produces a return that looks complete and is wrong — so period-on-period movement checks are mandatory, and an unexplained swing stops the run. Where the core system has no API, extracts are manual files, and the run inherits their timing. A new rule from the regulator is interpreted by your compliance lead, then encoded; the model does not read circulars. The playbook's 50–70% covers assembly and validation; interpretation, exception investigation and regulator correspondence are outside it.

How long it takes, and what we need from you

Audit, about two weeks (€1.5–3K): we walk one cycle with the team, list every source system and extract behind the return, and check which of them your IT will let us read directly. Pilot, 4–6 weeks — medium complexity in the finance playbook (€10–20K): one return, one cycle, the team reviewing every populated field and every draft paragraph before anyone signs. Production: the remaining returns, one per cycle. From you: last period's working files and the reviewer's time for one cycle.

The path: free 60-second estimate → free 20-minute review → paid audit of this one process (€1.5–3K, typically two weeks) → pilot with your people in the loop (€10–20K, weeks, not quarters). No transformation programme. Prices are public, on the services page →

This is about you if…

Do the figures for a return come from more than one system and meet in a spreadsheet?
Does someone paste, re-key or reconcile them by hand before the reviewer sees the return?
Are the validation checks you apply written down anywhere a system could run them?

What does this mean in euros?

That depends on your volumes and wage costs — this page will not invent the number. The free 60-second estimate runs that calculation from your answers, with every multiplier sourced.

Get your free savings estimate 60 seconds · no sales call Or write first → Map a finance process like this one — free, 60 seconds →

Not a named Aperanda client. Process file · Finance.

Deep-dive process file. Volumes, weeks and sources come from the industry playbook; nothing here is a named client.

All process files