This project arose from the problem that at the end of the month or quarter, the reconciliation of internal transactions (accounts and invoices) uncovered serious differences. Those differences influenced the consolidated accounts negatively, because a strict balance sheet (consolidated exclusive of internal transactions) could not be created. The various local companies communicated via fax or email. This often lead to misunderstandings, because faxes disappeared and emails did not reach the correct receiver.

Based on that, the corporate consolidation department was looking for a way to enable the local companies to reconcile their outstanding inter-company positions in real time via intranet on a common platform independent of geographical or time zones or personal availability. This communication was improved by the use of a central contact list.

This list included position, telephone and fax number as well as the email address of the colleagues in charge. This made an unerring and fluent contact possible. With the open structure of this platform, e.g. two local companies from the USA and Germany were now able to balance their invoices and accounts also outside the reporting period.

The designed solution was an intranet-based application, accessible and usable for all local companies.

Reconciliation-Process

ICCT - Characteristics & Profits

• possibility to enter manually all open invoices and non-balanced accounts

• automatic upload of all invoice and account information from various source systems

• automatic reconciliation of the invoices, whose characteristics (amount, currency, date and invoice number) match, regardless of the entity's location or time

• manual reconciliation of non-matching invoices and account data

• possibility to comment on specific positions or “real” differences (e.g. currency variability or changed invoice number)

• status monitor visualizing the entry status of the different companies and their outstanding items

• contact list that is maintained by the companies themselves

This solution enabled a quicker inter-company reconciliation and reduced workload at local and corporate level. This removes inter-company reconciliation from the critical path and resolves mismatches already before reporting submission which led to a time saving of 1 to 2 weeks during the closing period and improved the quality significantly. The solution increased the flexibility of the local user and gave an automated overview that allowed more time to focus on the issues.

ICCT - Overview

Mainmenu

Invoice Entry

Invoice Entry - PopUp

Matching-Payables

Matching-Receivables

Validation