LEANPRO / WORKING KNOWLEDGE
Finance systems readiness checklist.
Before you switch systems, establish that the business can operate through the change.
Can the right person carry it through from start to finish?
A system can be configured while the organisation is still unprepared. Finance readiness connects technical delivery to the people, information and decisions needed to invoice customers, approve expenditure, pay suppliers and report performance.
Use these six areas to structure your review. Record the evidence, owner and unresolved actions for each relevant business process.
Define the first operating day
Agree the entities, regions and transactions in scope. Distinguish what must work immediately from activity that can safely follow. Include manual or interim arrangements in the operating picture.
Ask your team: Which transaction would cause the greatest operational disruption if it failed?
Connect inputs to named owners
Entity information, banking arrangements, tax decisions, customer and supplier records, and integration inputs often sit outside the system delivery team. Each dependency needs a clear owner and a required date.
Ask your team: Who provides the input, who approves it, and which task does it unblock?
Test the real business journey
Work through invoicing, approval, payment and reporting with the people who will perform them. Include exceptions, rejected transactions, different currencies where relevant, and the hand-off between systems.
Ask your team: Have we tested the business process, or only individual system functions?
Establish data and access readiness
Define acceptance criteria for migration and reconciliation. Confirm the appropriate users can perform their roles and that approval permissions reflect the operating model. Record who accepts the evidence.
Ask your team: Can the receiving team explain and accept the migrated balances and open items?
Rehearse cutover and contingency
Sequence the activities around real dependencies. Agree decision points, communication routes and the consequences of a missed step. Check that contingency arrangements are workable for the people expected to use them.
Ask your team: What happens if the planned transition cannot complete?
Support the first operating cycle
Make support ownership visible to users. Plan coverage around invoicing, payments and the first close. Define the evidence needed to reduce intensive support and transfer ownership into normal operations.
Ask your team: Who helps when something fails after the project team has stepped back?
Make the decision evidence visible.
A readiness review should produce a working view of what is proven, what remains unresolved and who accepts the consequences. It supports an accountable go-live decision rather than replacing the judgement of the responsible leaders.
Take this into your next meeting.
Use the transaction checklist, dependency register and decision agenda in the free workbook.
Download the readiness packNeed help connecting the work?
Leanpro provides finance systems implementation and readiness support. Explore our finance separation experience or discuss your programme.