The time saved is phenomenal. The treasurer has been redirected to higher value-added tasks, in particular to relieve the chief accountant.
Epalia has chosen CashOnTime Allocation and Collection to manage large volumes of invoices and optimize its administrative efficiency. Administrative and Financial Director Anthony HUMBERT shares his experience in a workshop led by Fanny RONDET (CashOnTime Sales Manager) during the DIMO Software 2023 Forum.
View Epalia’s experience feedback
A large volume of monthly invoices
Epalia (€80+ m sales 2022. 380 employees, 40+ sites in France, 10,000+ collection and relocation points) is one of the French leaders in the reuse of wooden pallets, with 16 million+ pallets processed annually. It is also a player in the circular economy, with two main activities: the purchase of second-hand pallets from manufacturers and distributors, and the management of pallet fleets on behalf of customers, on an ad hoc basis with a small mobile workshop, or under delegated management with full-time staff at customer sites. Its main customers are manufacturers, distributors and waste managers. The company’s services include pallet buy-back, recovery, repair and sale, as well as equipment loans. In addition, Epalia has developed a CSR policy based on 4 principles: health and safety, the collective, the common good and the community. In addition, Epalia’s Chairman is a member of the Convention des Entreprises pour le Climat (CEC). Epalia has deployed the entire CashOnTime Allocation and Collection platform, even though the initial focus was on matching, to manage and automate the customer collection side of the business.
The quest for efficiency in receivables management
Epalia issues around 30,000 invoices a year, with an average invoice value of between €2,500 and €3,000, and processes around 1,500 cash receipts every month. All these tasks were carried out by the treasurer and then entered into the ERP one by one. Each one then had to be validated one by one. “An average bank statement took around 2 hours. For deadlines on the 15th and 30th, the treasurer could spend all day on very time-consuming tasks, without necessarily backing up the customer account due to lack of time. As a result, the accounts receivable were not necessarily up to date and, consequently, debt collection had to be made more reliable. We saw the allocation solution and also Collection, the debt collection tool. The budget for the latter was very attractive. We appreciated the communication between the two solutions, which convinced us,” says Anthony HUMBERT.
The in-house ERP is Sage x3. At present, in aged-balance photos, Epalia has 4,700+ invoices. There are around 20,000 collections per year. Fanny RONDET explains: “CashOnTime knows how to adapt to all types of customer, with an offer adapted to the volume of collections: from customers whose consumption is between 3,000 and 5,000 annual collections, right up to a million annual invoices”. Anthony Humbert adds: “We have 13,000 long-standing customers, with 3,000 active ones spread across France, and local sales staff in charge of local customers. It was important for us to have a solution that could pool information and enable communication between the various users.“
Quick installation of customer workstation management software
With regard to project deployment, the fact that the offer was highly packaged and promised relatively rapid installation was much appreciated. The implementation schedule for the allocation part was respected: “Within two months, we were operational and trained on the solution. The debt collection part was implemented a second time, with the same timeframe. So it was relatively quick. Internally, we set up a small project group, involving the IT Department for the interface part, which is crucial to the successful implementation of the solution. The operational part was dealt with by our credit manager and our treasurer for the day-to-day parameterization and definition of the functionalities required to achieve the administrative efficiency we were looking for. Finally, our chief accountant indicated all the elements reinjected into the accounting system, to ensure compliance with the entry scheme and good communication with our ERP“, explains Anthony HUMBERT.
Parameterization: a point of attention upstream
According to Anthony HUMBERT, you need to spend time with the IT department to explain the necessary elements, extract the right new files and set up the right communication within the solution. These elements will be injected into the solution, enabling automatic allocation and workflow. This is a real point of vigilance during implementation.
Consequently, when DIMO Software consultants come on board, the IT department must have defined the necessary file formats and data requirements. Interface descriptions are provided during this pre-sales phase. Depending on the ERP system in place, DIMO Software can push sample files of anonymized customer productions, and provide structures already in place. “We adapt our interfaces to the ERP version, to any specific developments the customer may have made, or simply to the functionalities deployed. There will always be variations from one customer to another, even with the same ERP version, but CashOnTime’s ease of mapping enables this adaptation,” explains Fanny RONDET. Anthony HUMBERT notes that the fact that the DIMO Software expert consultant deals directly with the IT department also saves time.
Enormous time-savings with the use of customer item management software
The automatic matching rate is almost 90%. The treasurer manages only the matching not recognized by the solution: “The time saved is phenomenal. In the past, our American shareholder would get a cash flow statement at the end of the day. Now, as early as 8 a.m., it’s already in his mailbox. The treasurer has been redirected to higher value-added tasks, in particular to relieve the chief accountant. She now provides analytical support, particularly for the KPIs generated by the solution.”
There are often peaks in activity linked to Epalia’s business, notably higher volumes of cash receipts at the beginning, middle and end of the month. Despite this, the 80% automatic matching rate remains stable. We can really go into detail, find out which allocation phases have performed more or less well, identify customers and find out what’s happening on the unidentified. The machines learn automatically and continuously from what users do.
For Anthony HUMBERT: “The advantage of this implementation is that even during vacations, we have a relatively fast backup. We can interface matched entries. If we haven’t had time to process the unmatched entries, we still have 80% of the entries arriving in our accounts, which is appreciable, particularly for debt collection. On this point, we didn’t set out to change our solution, but we were able to overhaul all our customer dunning scenarios, update our workflows, our pre-releases, etc. We were able to give different license rights to our customers. We were able to give different license rights to our local sales people and to our area managers, who are the local customer managers. This has enabled us to develop a “cash culture“ within the company, and to have data up to date on D+1, which wasn’t necessarily the case before, as allocation took a long time“.
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