A group figure you can defend
For the group CFO: telecom spend in each company's own currency and the group's, the rate named on every conversion.
A month
A month in group finance
The bills land
Each company's bills arrive as CSV, XLSX, PDF or e-invoice files, each kept exactly as it arrived. Every line is bound to its service by an identifier, and each recurring charge is checked against its contract price.
Each amount, three ways
As billed, in the company's own currency and in the group's reporting currency, each converted figure naming the rate that produced it.
Shared charges are split
By a rule you set, into shares that add up exactly to the whole. The source charge stays as billed, beside its allocation.
The month closes
A company's month moves from open to collecting, soft close and close. Closing it locks its figures at the rate frozen for that month.
Currencies
Each amount, in three currencies
Each figure is held as billed, in its company's own currency and in the group's reporting currency.
- As billed
- The provider's currency, in whole minor units, so a currency with finer units, such as the Kuwaiti dinar, keeps its exact precision.
- The company's currency
- The currency the company keeps its books in.
- The group's currency
- The currency the group reports in. The bills list leads with the total billed in it, summed from each bill's recorded conversion.
- The rate
- Every converted figure names the rate that produced it, or is not written at all. A bill's page states its conversion in one sentence, with the rate and its date.
- The policy
- The group's FX policy sets which rate type leads, which fall back in order and how old a rate may be, with its own leading rate for budgets and statutory tie-out.
- The sources
- Published reference rates are collected on a schedule, beside the rates a group administrator enters, each entry audited.
- No usable rate
- The figure reads Not converted and a person is asked for a rate. It is never added in at par, and a fallback is never worked out through a third currency.
Month end
A restated rate never moves a closed month.
An exchange rate is never changed: a corrected rate is a new record. Each month's figures stay at the rate frozen for that month, and a later change is recorded as a restatement with its reason.
How a bill line is heldShared charges
One charge, split by rule
Shares that add up
An allocation rule splits a cost into shares that add up exactly to the whole.
Billed beside allocated
Billed spend and allocated spend are shown side by side and never added into one figure.
From a chosen day
A new allocation can be scheduled to take over from a future day.
Bundles, split on acceptance
A bundle's charge is split to its member services when the bill is accepted.
Budgets
Each company against its budget
Across the group, budgets are listed company by company under each division's heading.
- The rows over and under budget, counted
- Over, under or on budget, said in words
- Spend by the group's own structure, allocations in and out
- A request checked against the month's budget, at a recorded rate
The reader
Written for the group's finance seat
- Who reads it
- Group CFOs, financial controllers and FP&A teams who consolidate telecom spend across several companies and currencies.
- The question
- What does the group spend on connectivity, in one currency, and will each figure reproduce months later?
- What they get
- Each company in its own currency, the group in its reporting currency, every amount to its currency's own precision, and the rate named on every conversion.
- Where it starts
- One company and three invoices, in whatever form the provider sent them: enough for a figure the group can check line by line.
Questions
Questions from group finance
How do we reconcile this with the ledger?
Every figure keeps its billed amount beside its converted ones, in whole minor units, each naming its rate. A difference points at a line, not at a report.
The invoice register shows each bill's total in the group's currency, and its total row adds up only when every bill is converted.
What happens at period close?
Closing a month locks its figures. A later change is recorded as a restatement that names its reason: a corrected rate, a corrected bill, a changed allocation or a changed metric.
A closed month can be reopened.
Can an auditor trace a converted figure?
Yes. Each converted figure names the rate that produced it. A rate is never changed, so the rate and its date read the same months later.
Can the figures be sent to us?
Reports are scheduled weekly or monthly and sent by email as a CSV file.
Does this replace our expense tool?
The pilot answers that on your own invoices, before anything is replaced: one company, its providers, its month.
Trace one figure to its invoice line
Three invoices from one company show the trace, through the rate it used.
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