The contract review process is highly manual and typically involves the revenue accountant reading through dozens or more contracts per month searching for specific items. This checklist of items to identify and extract can be over 50 items long. Alongside the introduction of ASC 606 and its ambiguity with SaaS revenue recognition, contract review can be lengthy and confusing, taking up an inordinate amount of an accountant's time.
Revenue accountants are on the ground and immersed in their company's contract review process, and are thus most impacted by inefficient workflow management tools. Teams commonly handle the assignment and tracking of contracts through different stages of review with Email, Microsoft Excel, or other tools not designed for this purpose. This lengthens an already time-consuming process for accountants.
After reviewing a contract, a revenue accountant typically inputs the data from the contract into the company's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for billing purposes and later use by other stakeholders. However, there are often inconsistencies between the data extracted from the contract and the data that lies in other systems, sometimes with crucial fields like the company's legal name and billing address.