FISCAL Case Studies.

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Fruit of the Loom: Case Study

Fruit of the Loom depended on a complete manual audit of each invoice prior to system release for payment to catch duplicate or erroneous entries. Discover how we helped them automate this process and achieve 100% ROI within a short time.

Introduction

Fruit of the Loom Inc (FOTL), a Berkshire Hathaway company, is a long-established global manufacturer of quality clothes. The company has over 32,500 employees worldwide. The company’s AP team of 30 employees used Oracle as their ERP platform. They processed 150,000 invoices per year with a 75% purchase order match rate, issuing payments weekly. Although the payments were centralised, invoice entry was decentralised.

“The automated checking of invoice entries meant our Accounts Payable team were released from manual audits and freed up to work on long-term projects.”
Details

The company had five full-time employees who completed a manual audit of each invoice before system release for payment. This process was time-consuming and tiring, and despite their efforts payment errors were still a risk. Several large, long-term finance projects were also in progress, requiring the team to stretch their efforts. The Treasury department owned the company’s 7000 strong master supplier file and were responsible for yearly reviews. However, Fruit of the Loom wanted a way to cleanse the supplier file more often without it impacting too much staff time.

They also brought in external auditors every three years, and Accounts Payable staff performed quarterly post-audits by analysing system dump data in Excel. This took several weeks due to the sheer volume of transactions, and human error meant there was a risk of mistakes or oversights. The review could also only look at three months of data at a time. The team knew they needed to extend this time range and make the process less labour-intensive.

Solution

The company’s US headquarters selected FISCAL’s software to protect their accounts payable operations, then quickly decided to roll out the implementation internationally, incorporating their UK and European operations. By choosing our software, the team could automate their controls and find exceptions, duplicate invoices and other risks before payment. This prevented erroneous payments before they occurred, rather than incurring the fees that come with audit and post-review. FISCAL also provided transactional review across a three-year span of data in an easy and efficient way.

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