Case Study: Major U.S. City achieves faster, more accurate ACFR compilation and weeks of time savings with Workiva

Simplifying the CAFR Process for a Major U.S. City

A major U.S. city’s finance team of five struggled to assemble its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) using a patchwork of Word and Excel files. The process required constant switching between documents and spreadsheets, manual data entry and updates, inconsistent formatting and numbers, and a time-consuming recompile whenever auditors requested changes. Traditional solutions the team reviewed only improved formatting and didn’t address these workflow problems.

Workiva migrated the city’s existing ACFR into a single, linked workbook and report, pulling data directly from the financial system and enabling multiple users to edit the same version simultaneously. Linked numbers and tables update automatically, reducing manual edits and formatting work. As a result, the team expects to save several weeks of effort each cycle, deliver the report to auditors sooner with greater accuracy, and plans to expand Workiva across other financial reports.