If you’ve ever managed the preparation of your city or county’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR), you know it’s not just a heavy lift — it’s a high-wire act.

The hours add up. But the real cost of a manual ACFR process isn’t just time. It’s risk. Stress. Fragility. Missed opportunities. And worst of all, it repeats itself every year.

Too many public sector finance teams rebuild the ACFR from scratch, relying on disconnected spreadsheets, copied values, and formatting workarounds to get it across the finish line. The result? A scramble that feels inevitable — but isn’t.

The Work You See (And the Risk You Don’t)

Most teams expect the ACFR to be time-intensive. It’s complex. It’s public-facing. It’s audit-critical.

But it’s not the complexity that causes chaos — it’s the lack of structure behind the process.

When you’re managing your ACFR manually, you’re likely:

• Pulling data from multiple spreadsheets across departments
• Manually inserting numbers into Word-based templates
• Rewriting footnotes every time something changes
• Rechecking totals and formatting that break with each revision
• Re-exporting repeatedly to fix headers, pagination, or the TOC

That’s more than just effort — it’s vulnerability.

What Manual ACFR Prep Actually Costs

1. Accuracy

When numbers are copied across documents, consistency becomes a guessing game. One mistake in a footnote or chart can undermine the report’s credibility — and trigger more audit back-and-forth.

2. Burnout

Experienced team members spend weeks focused not on analysis but on formatting. Instead of leading with insight, they’re manually syncing headers and chasing down version conflicts while racing toward a deadline.

3. Turnover Risk

When one person “owns” the ACFR process, the entire workflow depends on their memory, spreadsheets, and last year’s files. If that person retires, changes roles, or leaves unexpectedly, the team starts from scratch — often without a clear map of what to do next. The more manual the process, the harder it is to transfer or scale.

4. Lost Strategic Time

The ACFR should be more than a compliance document. It’s a signal of transparency and trust. But when teams are buried in formatting and footnotes, they lose the chance to tell the story with clarity and context.

What Better Looks Like

We’ve worked with public sector finance teams across the country who used to spend months preparing their ACFR manually. The process felt normal — until they changed it.

With Gravity, they:

• Link every number to its source
• Automate footnotes, tables, page numbers, and disclosures
• Keep formatting consistent from start to publish
• Cut their ACFR prep time by up to 85%
• Build a repeatable, auditable process — instead of reinventing it every year

And they do all of this without replacing their ERP or changing how they work with auditors. They stop relying on disconnected tools to do mission-critical work.

Final Thought: You Don’t Need to Start From Scratch Again

Every year, the ACFR tells your city’s story. It reflects your team’s work, leadership, and commitment to transparency.

But how most teams prepare it — from the ground up, every time — adds risk and erodes the time you could spend doing higher-impact work.

There’s a better way to build your ACFR. One that saves time reduces stress and strengthens every number, note, and narrative.

Want to see how Gravity helps streamline ACFR preparation?