The Drop.Top Blog

Insights for group finance leaders

Practical guides, industry research, and best practices for CFOs and group controllers managing complex multinational close cycles.

Featured

The 2026 Group Finance Close Report: How 150 CFOs Are Cutting Cycle Time

We surveyed 150 group financial controllers at companies with 25–500+ subsidiaries. Here's what separates the teams closing in 5 days from those still taking 3 weeks.

Thomas Leyder·February 14, 2026·12 min read
How-To

How to Build a Waterproof Data Validation Template for Excel Submissions

Jan 28, 2026 · 8 min
Research

IFRS 18 and the Consolidation Challenge: What Group Controllers Need to Know

Jan 15, 2026 · 10 min
Opinion

Why Email Is Destroying Your Close Process (And What to Do About It)

Dec 18, 2025 · 6 min

All Articles

Guide

5 Signs Your Consolidation Process Is a Liability Risk

From missing audit trails to unvalidated currency conversions — the red flags that auditors look for in your close process.

Dec 5, 2025 · 7 min read
Case Study

How Sonepar Cut Validation Errors from 40% to Under 1%

A look inside the column mapping and validation rollout across 200+ entities in 6 countries.

Nov 22, 2025 · 9 min read
Deep Dive

Intercompany Eliminations at Scale: An ETL Approach

How to automate the most painful step in group consolidation using structured data pipelines.

Nov 10, 2025 · 14 min read
How-To

Building an Entity Compliance Scorecard Your CFO Will Actually Use

A practical template for tracking on-time submission rates, data quality scores, and escalation history per entity.

Oct 29, 2025 · 5 min read
Research

The Hidden Cost of Manual Data Collection: A €100M Opportunity

Our analysis of 47 group finance teams reveals the true cost — in time, errors, and risk — of managing data collection by hand.

Oct 14, 2025 · 11 min read
Opinion

The CFO's Guide to Buying Financial Consolidation Software in 2026

What to evaluate, what to ignore, and the questions to ask vendors that actually reveal how the product works.

Sep 30, 2025 · 8 min read