2016 SEC Filing Calendar – and 2 Other Simple Financial Reporting Time Management Tips for the New Year

As financial reporting professionals, we frequently ask ourselves how we can be better at what we do. But there’s something about the dawning of a New Year that makes us even more open to adopting habits that will help us improve, for the benefit of both our organization and ourselves.

One way to do this is to take a more individualistic approach to one of the overriding industry themes of 2015: Disclosure effectiveness.

In a recent survey, 74% of companies said they were taking action to improve financial reports in the name of boosting disclosure effectiveness.¹ While these companies reported taking a cross-functional, collaborative approach to this initiative, it’s also worth noting that individual strides toward improved workflow and productivity will also contribute to the greater good of disclosure effectiveness across the financial reporting team.

One of the simplest ways you can be a more effective cog in your company’s Disclosure Management Cycle is to adopt these 3 simple, yet effective time management tips:

1. Get a 2016 SEC Filing Calendar – Print and hang it near your desk as a handy reference to not only keep track of your filing deadlines, but also create work back schedules to help avoid late filings. Imagine the time you’ll save by not having to scour the SEC website every time you want to confirm a 2016 deadline or federal holiday.
2. Automate Where Possible - Keeping on top of relevant news in your industry is a best practice that many would like to do more frequently, but to spend hours searching for this information isn’t the most effective use of time. Instead, try a disclosure research solution to schedule automatic inbound alerts for items pertaining to regulations including new standards, exposure drafts/proposals and news releases. These alerts remove the manual labor of industry and regulatory awareness and will free up time to spend on more pressing tasks like filing preparation.

3. Avoid Reinventing the Wheel – Whether you’re filing under a new standard for the first time or trying to pare down on lengthy narrative in the notes to the financials, you can save substantial time by reviewing precedent examples in your peer group. This way, rather than spending valuable time writing or designing something from scratch, you can review these examples and hand-pick the specific elements that you’d like to borrow and adjust them for your organization.

Start 2016 off right by managing your time more effectively – get the 2016 SEC Filing calendar here and learn more about how else DisclosureNet can help you save time.

¹"Disclosure Effectiveness - Companies Embrace the Call to Action."Financialexecutives.org. Financial Executives Research Foundation & EY, 19 Nov. 2015. Web. 08 Dec. 2015.