Your ACFR gets done every year. Somehow.
But “done” does not mean sustainable. Late nights before the deadline. Last-minute errors caught by auditors. The same fire drills, every cycle. Most finance teams assume this is just how it works.
It is not.
Here are five signs your process has outgrown your tools – and what to do about it.
1. You spend more time formatting than analyzing
If layout takes longer than review, the balance is off. Your job is financial analysis, not document design. Yet many teams find themselves rebuilding tables, fixing fonts, and taking screenshots instead of verifying numbers.
GFOA’s Rethinking Financial Reporting initiative is asking the profession to confront this directly: is the finance officer’s time well spent producing lengthy reports that few people read?
When formatting consumes more hours than the work it is supposed to present, the process, not your team, is the problem.
2. Version control is a daily battle
Multiple people. Multiple files. Multiple weeks. You know how it ends: someone asks “which version has the auditor’s changes?” at 9 PM the night before the deadline.
When your ACFR lives across dozens of disconnected spreadsheets, Word documents, and email attachments, confusion is inevitable. File names like “ACFR_FINAL_v3_REVISED_auditoredits.xlsx” become the norm. Conflicting changes get overwritten. The “final” version is never actually final.
If your team spends more time tracking files than tracking finances, that is a process problem waiting to become an audit finding.
3. You rebuild the report from scratch every year
Last year’s ACFR should be a foundation, not a fresh start. Rolling forward should take minutes, not days.
GFOA’s research paper The Speed We Need highlights governments in the “Four-Month Club,” which are those completing their ACFR in four months or less. What separates them? They treat financial reporting as a repeatable process, not a one-time project.
Modern ACFR software like Gravity’s Disclosure Studio builds on this principle: your prior-year structure becomes the starting point, not something you recreate manually.
4. Critical knowledge lives in one person’s head
If someone’s vacation would derail the process, that is a risk. If someone’s retirement would cause a crisis, that is a bigger one.
Picture this: your most experienced team member retires mid-cycle. Now the report is due, and everyone is working nights and weekends to decode the Excel macros she built over 15 years. The deadline is looming. Frustration is mounting. And no one is sure how to replicate what she did.
When the process exists only in someone’s head, you are not just risking deadlines. You are risking accuracy. Modern systems make the process visible, so institutional knowledge stays with the institution, not the individual.
5. Deadline pressure becomes deadline chaos
Some pressure is unavoidable. Finance work has hard deadlines. But chaos is optional.
The difference? A connected, predictable process versus a fragmented, reactive scramble. Firefighting errors. Auditor surprises. Working weekends. These are not signs of a hardworking team. They are symptoms of a broken workflow.
GFOA’s best practices emphasize that faster reporting should not mean more stress. When governments complete their ACFRs in four months instead of six, they do it with better processes, not more overtime. The goal is to work smarter during normal hours, not harder during crunch time.
What to do next
If two or three of these signs sound familiar, you are not alone, and the path forward is clearer than you might think.
Start with a process audit. Map out how your ACFR actually gets built: who touches it, where the handoffs happen, which steps create the most friction. Often, the biggest time sinks are invisible until you document them.
Identify your single point of failure. Which person, file, or step would cause the most damage if it disappeared tomorrow? That is where modernization pays off first.
Learn what “modern” actually looks like. ACFR modernization is not just new software. It is a different way of working. Understanding the full picture helps you make the right investment.
Read the complete guide: ACFR Modernization: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Get Started
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Cloud-based ACFR software connects your financial data directly to your report, eliminating manual copy-paste between spreadsheets and documents. Many governments report cutting preparation time by 50% or more. Our client Columbus, Ohio reduced their ACFR prep from two weeks to one day (read the story here). The key is having a single source of truth: when data updates in one place, it flows everywhere automatically.
Modern ACFR software like Gravity’s Disclosure Studio handles both creation and formatting in a single platform. Key features to look for include: AI-powered import from prior-year reports, GFOA award-ready templates with built-in compliance validation, ADA-compliant publishing, and live preview so you can see changes as you work. The goal is professional output without requiring separate design software or consultants.
They are the same report with a different name. GFOA changed the terminology from Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) to Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) in 2021 after concerns that the old acronym could be misread. The content, structure, and requirements remain identical – it is simply a reordering of the words.
Yes – good software builds GFOA requirements into the workflow. Rather than reviewing a checklist manually after the fact, modern platforms validate compliance as you work: flagging missing sections, ensuring proper formatting, and confirming required disclosures are present. This shifts compliance from a last-minute scramble to an ongoing verification throughout the process.
The most effective strategies focus on eliminating redundant work rather than working faster. This means: using templates that roll forward from prior years, linking tables directly to source data so they update automatically, building compliance checks into the workflow rather than reviewing manually at the end, and centralizing the report in one system instead of scattering it across spreadsheets, Word docs, and design software.
Related Reading
To Err Is Human, But Your ACFR Cannot Afford It – Why spreadsheet errors are a process problem, not a people problem
ACFR Modernization: The Complete Guide – Everything you need to know about modernizing your ACFR process