Consolidation Process Command Center Method

Abstract

For a financial consolidation process, user input is received defining financial consolidation tasks for business entities and the tasks are associated with respective roles. The roles are assigned to persons who are responsible for completion of tasks associated with their respective roles. A graphical user interface is presented providing control elements and task icons representing the financial consolidation tasks for the business entities, including presenting a visual feature of each icon indicating status of each icon's respective task. Responsive to receiving a user input from a user control element for a selected task icon, identification is shown for a person assigned to the task of the selected task icon.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method for a financial consolidation process, the method comprising:
 receiving user input defining financial consolidation tasks for business entities, associating the tasks with respective roles and assigning the roles to persons who are responsible for completion of tasks associated with their respective roles;   presenting a graphical user interface providing control elements and task icons representing the financial consolidation tasks for the business entities, including presenting a visual feature of each icon indicating status of each icon's respective task; and   responsive to receiving a user input from a user control element, showing, for a selected task icon, an identification for a person assigned to the task of the selected task icon.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1  comprising:
 showing only a selected set of the task icons responsive to receiving a user input from a filter control element for selecting among all the tasks; and 
 performing an action for the tasks of the selected set of the task icons responsive to receiving a user input from an action control element. 
 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 2  wherein performing the action includes sending communications to the persons responsible for the tasks of the selected set of the task icons. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein presenting a graphical user interface providing control elements comprises:
 showing a plurality of filter control elements for selecting among all the tasks, wherein ones of the filter control elements are business entity filter control elements and ones of the filter control elements are task filter control elements, each task filter control element being associated with a respective task status category, and wherein the method comprises:   showing on the grid of task icons only a selected set of the task icons responsive to receiving user inputs from ones of the plurality of filter control elements, including receiving a user input selecting tasks associated with user-selected business entities via at least one of the business entity filter control elements and receiving a user input selecting tasks having a user-selected task status via at least one of the task filter control elements and responsively showing in the selected set of the task icons only task icons for the user-selected business entities and that have the user-selected task status.   
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 4 , wherein ones of the filter control elements are person filter control elements, and wherein showing on the grid of task icons only a selected set of the task icons responsive to receiving user inputs from ones of the plurality of filter control elements comprises:
 receiving a user input selecting tasks associated with persons via at least one of the person filter control elements and responsively showing in the selected set of the task icons only task icons for the user-selected business entities and that have the user-selected task status and that are for the selected persons.   
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 4 , comprising:
 showing how many business entities have a respective task status category for each respective business entity filter control element.   
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 4 , comprising:
 showing how many tasks have a respective task status category for each respective task filter control element.