TrustRadius Insights for Workiva are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
Wdesk has become an indispensable tool for various teams within the company. The Financial Reporting team relies on Wdesk to file important documents such as the company's 10-K and 10-Qs, while the Legal department uses it for filing Proxy Statements. Additionally, Internal Reporting finds Wdesk useful for filing quarterly press release 8Ks. The program's permissions feature allows for seamless collaboration and input from different departments on each document. As a result, users have expanded its use to involve other groups like Treasury and Legal for their unique filings. While its primary focus is SEC filings, Wdesk is slowly being incorporated into areas such as Certifications and SOX. Users have been utilizing Wdesk for over two years and greatly appreciate the product as a whole, as well as the company's commitment to excellence and transparency in customer service.
With Wdesk's secure cloud-based platform, capturing, preparing, and aggregating financial data from various sources has become effortless. Users have the ability to create and model reports and analyses tailored to their specific needs, all linked to the relevant data. This versatility makes Wdesk an ideal choice for Annual Reports and SEC filings. However, some users have encountered compatibility issues with Word and Excel 2007, as well as challenges related to syncing and file formats. To complement their workflow, certain users have integrated Microsoft Teams alongside Wdesk. The Global Financial Reporting Team relies on Wdesk to prepare essential documents like Earnings Releases, Form 10-Ks, Form 10-Qs, and IFRS financial statements. As other departments witness its potential in streamlining processes such as document control and consistent financial reporting, there is increasing encouragement for wider adoption of Wdesk throughout the organization. Notably, external auditors and legal counsel also utilize Wdesk to review filings and provide valuable feedback.
The benefits of using Wdesk extend beyond financial reporting alone; it also plays a pivotal role in the company's SOX program and serves as the go-to financial reporting tool. Users particularly appreciate Wdesk for its cloud-based functionality, real-time reporting capabilities, and ease of creating tables. By leveraging Wdesk, the financial reporting team has successfully reduced errors and improved productivity in updating financial statements, eliminating the need for manual processes and mitigating inconsistencies. This time-saving aspect is highly valued by users. Overall, Wdesk has proven to be a reliable solution that enhances collaboration, simplifies data management, and empowers teams to deliver accurate and timely financial reports.
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Workiva Reviews
5 Reviews
Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees)
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Used Wdesk to create and update financial statements and other similar documents. It made it easier to update a single set of financials and have the numbers linked throughout the document, so an update in one area would lead to a refresh in all other areas the same tagged number was referenced. Previously, this would have been a very manual process, and things could have easily been missed leading to inconsistencies within the same document for the same number.
Pros
Linking Numbers.
Updating Numbers.
User Interface.
Cons
Tagging takes a while to get the hang of.
Customer support feels light.
Lag when switching between pages.
Likelihood to Recommend
Wdesk is great for companies that are publishing lengthy financial statements or similar documents where the same numbers will be referenced in multiple places. With Wdesk, you can load your financials directly to the tool and mark what numbers tie to which part and know that they will always be updated.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Finance and Accounting (501-1000 employees)
We use Wdesk for our SEC reporting and for our internal controls (SOX) processes. As such, Wdesk is localized within use of the Finance/Accounting and Internal Audit teams, though there may be interest to increase its use to other departments based on needs/wants. We also have Wdesk used by our external auditors and our legal counsel to review filings and to leave comments/ make redline changes before we finalize documents.
Pros
Integrated Financial Reporting (especially SEC reporting) for less manual work.
Section 16 filings.
SEC filings (preparing and filing SEC documents internally, instead of using a printer).
Security and safeguarding sensitive non-public information.
Continual product improvement and product investment.
Cons
Better out-of-the-box templates for best-in-class reporting and other needs.
Better organization of files within Wdesk.
Better integration of SOX and SEC activities.
Likelihood to Recommend
Wdesk is best suited for companies with demanding SEC filings and documents, with multiple revisions due to auditor/counsel review, and where financial reporting is extremely manual. Wdesk really helps take out the potential errors out of extremely manual processes, and helps automate regular financial reporting by allowing companies to link financial information and build customized flows of their information into financial statements and other documents (such as presentations or other internal reporting).
VU
Verified User
Director in Finance and Accounting (501-1000 employees)
It controls all the obstacles that come up during documentation, making spreadsheets, or preparing presentations because of its ability to handle cloud-based functionality. The real-time reporting feature makes it easy to track all our project activities. All kinds of risks can be tackled easily and control over each part of a project can easily be gained. Documents remain confidential and only authorized persons can view them. Tables can be created easily and the help section is very approachable.
Pros
Project management
Documentation
Real-time tracking
Effective & progressive reporting capablities
Data stays relevant and easy to understand
Cons
Limitations to spreadsheet formulas
Basic design (User Interface)
Works slow sometimes
Lacks few creative options
Excel formulas are limited to an extent
Likelihood to Recommend
Wdesk is best suited in project management as it provides real-time tracking. Also, it's best suited for documentation processes because there is no fear of losing the data due to its cloud-based capabilities. Task management also works flawlessly and a list of tasks can be created from the required data.
Used to quickly update financial statements for our financial reporting team, reducing errors and improving productivity. It helps departments across the company reduce errors by allowing certain fields to be auto-updated throughout once the financial statements are updated. Previously, we used Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and would end up spending hours manually fixing formatting when small updates were made to a write-up or table, but that all comes together much more quickly with Wdesk.
Pros
Formatting
Universal updates
Cons
Difficult to implement
Likelihood to Recommend
It’s an excellent tool, reducing your need to spend hours reformatting financial statements or carrying through changes quarter over quarter. If you’re going to purchase, it does require a full-time implementation team but is well worth it in the long run. It can also be used across teams for those that depend on financial statement information to populate presentations or other documents (for example, offering memorandums).
VU
Verified User
Project Manager in Information Technology (51-200 employees)
We use Wdesk for SEC Reporting. It's used by Accounting and external legal.
Pros
Filing - So easy to make last minute changes minutes before filing and still file on time; you're in control.
Linking - rolling documents forward each quarter is so easy because you change dates and numbers in one place, and they change everywhere you have them linked to.
XBRL - we used to do it in-house and now we outsource it to Workiva. Their tool is easy to use and since outsourcing, it's been beyond easy for us!
Cons
Usability - it's gotten light years better over the years but each feature, whether word processing, spreadsheets, charts, graphs, etc., Microsoft products are more robust and have more offerings. There's always something you wish you could do in Wdesk, thinking, "I can do this in Excel, I want to be able to ___ in Wdesk too"
Importing odd SEC documents. It just doesn't work all that well and a lot of formatting needs to go into it to get it ready. Once you have your standards - 10-K, 10-Q, etc., in and formatted, you're good, but when you try to bring in one-time documents like a credit agreement, employment agreements, or an underwriting agreement, formatting is time consuming. The alternative is to file the entire thing as an image, which we sometimes do, because of this issue.
Keeping organized. You build up a lot of documents and filings, things filed together, things that were never filed, etc., and it's challenging to weed through sometimes, when searching for something after the fact.
Likelihood to Recommend
Great for SEC Reporting and anything where you use and reuse numbers in management reporting, etc.
Not easy to use when you like to include screenshots as evidence.
VU
Verified User
Vice-President in Finance and Accounting (51-200 employees)
