Flinders General Store Harnesses Xero and Lightyear to Save 40%
on Operational Costs
Flinders General Store prides itself on bringing customers a wide variety of local and imported produce from around the world. Tasked with managing a high volume of inventory, the finance team, who use Xero as their accountancy software, were manually processing hundreds of invoices each month.
After identifying an opportunity to integrate automation into their AP processes, Flinders reached out Lightyear after receiving a recommendation from another retail organisation.
About Flinders General Store
Independently-owned retail business, Flinders General Store, has operated for almost 160 years, providing the Mornington Peninsula community with both local and imported produce. From fresh fruit and veg, freshly prepared ready meals and deli selections, to beers and wine, Flinders has an enormous inventory. As a result, the finance team have found themselves entering over 500 invoices a month into Xero. Coding each line item and manually checking each price is an extremely time consuming task.
To streamline operations, the team sought to introduce automation into the AP function through a trusted Xero partner app.
Overcoming AP Challenges
The vast amount of invoices to be processed was becoming overwhelming and burying the finance team in tedious administrative work. The time spent manually chasing invoice approvals, coding individual line items, cross-checking pricing and reconciling supplier statements took over 30 hours per month. Staff found themselves duplicating a lot of work between their POS system and Xero, for example, adding new suppliers and inventory.
Lightyear's Integration with Xero
As a preferred Xero AP partner, Lightyear has provided Flinders General Store with a seamless integration with their accounting software. The team was introduced to the Lightyear solution through a recommendation from another retail business who have seen great results from automation. With a wide range of capabilities, including multi-currency handling, inventory exports, automated approvals, coding and supplier statement reconciliation, Lightyear has been able to reduce Flinders manual data entry by 97%.
The advanced API integration with Xero means that the finance team can pull information such as GL coding, line item data, new suppliers and PDF invoice attachments into Xero without duplicating work. The ability to check supplier bank details against those stated on the invoice has given enhanced fraud prevention.
How the Team Regained over 20 Hours each Month
The introduction of Lightyear has enabled the team to work more efficiently. With data instantly extracted from supplier bills and credit notes, manual data entry has been eliminated, helping the team regain over 20 hours per month. Processing a large number of bills meant the team was manually reconciling these to supplier statements. With Lightyear’s automatic statement reconciliation, administrators can instantly reconcile their documents and quickly identify missing bills and email the supplier from within Lightyear.
Automated workflows have reduced a 5-day approval time to just one day, whilst offering a complete audit trail against each bill and strengthening supplier relationships with faster payments. Flinders General Store has seen profound benefits from the flag duplicate invoice feature, which notes when duplicate bills have entered the Lightyear system to avoid double payments.
The Results
"Lightyear eliminates having to manually enter invoices into your accounting software, as well as providing a means to reduce the time required to ensure POS pricing is up to date,” highlights Yvonne.
Overall, Flinders General Store has saved 40% on operational costs between price checking and administration time and reduced errors. Locating bills now takes less than 2 minutes with the easy access archive module, allowing admins to search for bills more accurately.
We wanted to provide a means to eliminate manual data entry into our accounts software, as well as gaining the functionality to export inventory data, assisting with the maintenance of our POS data.
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