Co-op

The Co-operative is a long term client of Aurum Solutions and uses the software to manage complex and high volume bank statement reconciliations. The software has delivered accurate and fast reconciliation and exception management, and a greater capacity to cope with future business growth.

In 2008, the Society instigated a search for a new bank statement reconciliation system which was prompted by changing business needs. The search resulted in the decision to purchase Aurum’s technology because it could handle the complexity and volume of transactions efficiently and quickly. After a short implementation, migration to the new system was completed.

Vicky Reaney, Banking and Administration Manager, Central England Co-operative said,

“The range and diversity of our businesses means that we have a large volume of financial transactions with multiple payment types such as cash, cheques, credit cards and PayPoint, to manage across a number of different accounts.”

The Central England Co-operative Finance team manages all transactions and payments for its different businesses. Complexity is fuelled by numerous transaction types which include cash banked by stores, PayPoint transactions and retail cheques. Credit card payments, including a separate American Express file, are also received daily. Additionally, a single disbursement or cheque for the funeral business can relate to multiple invoices and payments, each of which has to be matched separately. Leanne Cox, Senior Banking Administrator explains:

My colleagues and I perform a number of different reconciliations each week. It helps us match the bulk of our transactions using auto-match and suggest-match rules. We can quickly look at any exceptions and write off small discrepancies. Without Aurum Solutions platform, it would take a long time to match and settle the volume of transactions that we have, which run into the thousands.

On a weekly basis, bank statement files are downloaded electronically from each of the company’s banks. These are then matched against entries on the Agresso General Ledger (GL) system. Each transaction must be accounted for and reconciled correctly against the company’s bank statements, and responsibility for this falls to eight software users.

Any discrepancies below a certain value are uneconomic to investigate and are written off with the relevant difference posted back to the general ledger. The remaining exceptions are investigated further before the GL is updated.

Leanne describes the benefits that Aurum Solutions has delivered: “The main benefit that we get is the time saved in managing our diverse reconciliations.

It enables us to maintain an accurate position of our cash management at all times which helps minimise our financial risk. It has freed up staff time so that we are not just focused on matching and resolving exceptions, which means that as a department, we can cope better with our growing business volumes.

“We have found the software to be very easy to use and it is straightforward to train new users. The software is reliable too and on the rare occasions that we contact Aurum Solutions’ support team, they offer a responsive service. We also call upon their expertise with occasional system maintenance tasks such as clearing down old transactions and reconciling any differences created to ensure that our records are up to date and continues to operate at peak performance. The software works very well and we are planning to move the reconciliation of additional accounts onto the software. I would therefore recommend it to other co-operatives or businesses that need to manage complex reconciliations with multiple transaction types."

Central England Co-operative is one of the UK’s largest independent co-operatives with a turnover of around £1 billion, spanning 16 counties, from the heart of the nation to its eastern shores.

Formed by the merger of Midlands and Anglia Co-operatives, Central England Co-operative Limited is one of the largest independent Societies in the UK.

It has over 400 trading outlets, around 9,000 employees and more than 330,000 regular trading members.

It operates through more than 200 food stores, 100-plus funeral homes, 23 filling stations, 22 post offices, 21 travel branches, nine florists, three opticians, a specialist vehicle building business, five masonry outlets, a crematorium, and a coffin factory.