The financial close process: Implications for future research ☆ Diane Janvrin a, ⁎, Maureen Francis Mascha b a Department of Accounting, College of Business, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-1350, United States b Department of Accounting, Purdue University — Calumet, Calumet IN, United States article info abstract Article history: Received 1 June 2013 Received in revised form 28 January 2014 Accepted 15 May 2014 Available online 3 July 2014 This study advances our understanding of the current financial close process. Attention to the topic is warranted for four reasons. First, economic volatility and growth in restatements have increased pressure on companies to report performance timely, completely, and accurately to market participants. Second, recent regulations have increased the workload for accountants at period end thus negatively impacting the efficiency of the close process. Third, several SEC filings have contained control weaknesses related to the financial close process. Finally, academic research suggests that the time needed to complete the financial close process may serve as a proxy for a company's internal information environment quality. We draw upon prior research and conduct a field investigation with corporate financial officers from 22 different organizations to examine the role of four factors – need to meet expectations, collaboration among multiple participants, estimation process, and ability to incorporate new regulations – in the financial close process. Results suggest that researchers should examine further how the need to meet (or beat) expectations impacts management's actions and the effectiveness and efficiency of the financial close process. Future work could also explore how hidden profile task research and technology advances may improve the financial close process. Finally, research needs to examine how ex post estimate analysis may improve not only estimate quality but also the effectiveness and efficiency of the financial close process. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Financial close process Performance reporting Estimation process International Journal of Accounting Information Systems 15 (2014) 381–399 ☆ The authors thank Elaine Mauldin and Genevieve Leong for their valuable comments and suggestions as discussants of an earlier version of this paper presented at the 2013 University of Waterloo Research Symposium on Information Integrity & Information Systems Assurance, Roger Debreceny for his valuable suggestions, and Matt Allbee and Jarek Chizek for their research assistance. ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 515 294 9450. E-mail addresses: djanvrin@iastate.edu (D. Janvrin), Maureen.Mascha@purduecal.edu (M.F. Mascha). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2014.05.007 1467-0895/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Accounting Information Systems