The Problem
Dura relied on a traditional workflow: Excel tables embedded in Word, manual formatting, and long email threads with auditors. Each change risked broken dollar signs, misaligned double-underlines, and version-control chaos across 8–12 Word files.
With audit deadlines looming, the team spent disproportionate time on formatting and reconciliation instead of analysis.
“You’d add a row in Word and suddenly your dollar signs are off, your double lines are off. We’d spend hours fixing tables that had nothing to do with accounting.”
— Sloan Session, EVP, Finance and Accounting - Global
The process slowed collaboration and stretched draft turnarounds to hours or days, inflating cycle time and stress during issuance.
The solution
Facing tight audit deadlines, Dura turned to Inscope to simplify and accelerate its audit preparation process.
Instead of juggling Excel and Word files, the finance team built, reviewed, and finalized their statements directly in Inscope - an Excel-integrated workspace that allowed the company and its auditors to work faster, cleaner, and with far fewer manual steps.
Here’s how:
- Live auditor collaboration (no version control) — Auditors left comments directly in Inscope on specific footnotes, eliminating endless email chains and Word version chaos.
- Excel-native workflow — The team stayed entirely in Excel via Inscope’s add-in - no retraining, no context-switching, and no formatting headaches.
- Automated accuracy checks — Built-in footing and cross-footing verification replaced a historically manual process, ensuring every schedule balanced before audit review.
- AI disclosure assistant (Penny) — Using real-world disclosure examples, Penny generated tailored, audit-ready footnotes in minutes. Dura’s team could point it to a specific paragraph from Lyft’s 10-K and watch it rebuild the section perfectly in their own format - saving hours each week, noted Sloan.
Outcome
Dura issued cleaner first drafts, accelerated audit cycles, and materially reduced the lift required from its lean finance team.
- ~80% fewer internal review comments — formatting and fit automatically followed GAAP conventions.
- Turnaround time collapsed — internal draft cycles dropped from 3 days to 30 minutes. Sloan shared that “It felt like we were working live with the audit team… turning around drafts in minutes, not days.”
- Zero formatting notes from auditors during review.
- From full-time grind to part-time task — preparing and iterating financials once demanded a full headcount; with Inscope, it now takes less than 25% of one team member’s time.
- Change-management breakthrough — what began with hesitation ended in conviction. Within a single audit cycle, the team’s most Word-loyal accountant - once reluctant to switch - became Inscope’s biggest advocate, now saying she wouldn’t take another job without it.
“Inscope turned what was a borderline full-time audit-prep role into maybe 25% of someone’s job. Draft one in Inscope is as clean as draft five in Word.”
— Sloan Session, EVP, Finance and Accounting - Global