Success Story - Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc.
Walgreens Transforms Compliance Apportionment Using Corptax
Challenge
The Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (WBA) apportionment process relied on 80+ Excel® spreadsheets in order to analyze and adjust apportionment factors. A copy and paste method of disparate financial data was used to compile each entity’s workpaper and required manipulation in Excel before importing calculated amounts to CSC Corptax®.
Other challenges the team faced:
- Manually analyzing data sources through formulas and linked workbooks which questioned data integrity
- Lack of traceability between workpapers and Corptax due to final results being submitted
- Uncertainty of Excel macro usage placed a risk on calculations
Solution
WBA created a holistic solution by standardizing workpaper templates and integrating CSC Corptax® Office and Data Exchange in order to:
- Reduce workpapers from 80+ to 6 to perform the calculation
- Create tax-sensitized state GL accounts before loading into Corptax
- Create apportionment adjustment codes to facilitate book-to-tax work
- Push and pull data to validate and load manual adjustments
- Centralize business rules that pertain to WBA
Results
Corptax Office and Data Exchange transformed WBA’s apportionment process by enabling team members to focus on more value-added compliance tasks. Additional benefits include:
- Elimination of ~800 hours of non-value-added compliance activities
- Immediate validation of book data between federal and state trial balances
- ~ 2 hours to automatically post recurring reclasses and special allocations for all entities
- Enhanced usage of out-of-the-box apportionment reports in Corptax
- Ability to query data for state tax strategy and planning scenarios
- Added transparency and documentation for audit support