Cash allocation: Automation is key

An automated allocation system can massively benefit staff, allowing them to handle a much larger number of incoming transactions.

The business case for automating cash-to-bank reconciliation is now well-established. Reconciliation systems like Aurum match transactions on your bank statements to transactions on your ledgers, making the entire process quicker. Additionally, experience more control over your outgoing and incoming cashflow.

However, your bog-standard cash-to-bank reconciliation doesn’t address the question, how incoming receipts find themselves on your cashbook in the first place? For this, we need to take a closer look at the allocation process.

The challenges of allocation process

Allocating receipts follows a similar process to bank reconciliation – acquiring transactions from a bank statement and allocating them to entries on a sales ledger. As you might expect, the same fundamental problems apply:

• How do you know who did it?
• How do you know data wasn’t altered to make it fit?
• What do you do when amounts don’t match?

On top of this, you need to ensure there are clear and simple routes to post onto the sales ledger.

Innovative solutions by Aurum

We at Aurum Solutions implemented our first allocations solution in 2010, and since then we have been innovating clients processes, delivering rapid results worldwide. Here are two examples…

A client of ours ran an umbrella company for contractors and needed to allocate money from clients on a daily basis in order to pay the contractors they managed. Although generally once a reference had been used by a client it tended to refer to the same contractor, thereafter; the referencing process was inconsistent. Contracts ran for days or years, and there were hundreds of transactions to process a day - so many that the customer used to run their existing process three times a day.

The process we implemented for this client ensured that transactions from the bank weren’t duplicated, and gave the ability to match on either Gross Amount or Net Amount. We made sure the system learnt from manual matches using our RPA Technology – which references could automatically match and which couldn’t. By integrating with their existing systems, we also accurately recorded the allocated money directly onto the Sales Ledger.

Another customer of ours needed to cope with incoming payments made in instalments – something we call Partial Allocation. Furthermore, the solution needed to deal with overpayments, underpayments, and payments which settled two or more invoices at once. While these requirements may sound complex, the solution was implemented within a week. A credit to both the expertise of the Aurum Solutions team and the versatility of our software.

The benefits of automated allocation systems

• An automated Allocation system can massively benefit staff, allowing them to handle a much larger number of incoming transactions.
• Enhanced organizational security by ensuring they have an audit trail of all the decisions made when it comes to managing cash-flow.

At Aurum Solutions, our experience has shown that appropriately resolving references on an adaptable system which learns matching criteria is key to managing Allocations. The Aurum Platform provides complete and automated cash allocations and reconciliation infrastructure. Ready to accommodate your organization's requirements.

If you’re looking for a solution to transform your cash allocation process, you have just found it.