The tool has become the partner of every account executive, and “going back would create a riot.”
Gilles GALLINA, AFDCC Regional Representative and Credit Manager of the OXYANE Group, has chosen CashOnTime Allocation to unify his accounting methods and streamline the processing of large volumes of annual cash receipts. He shares his experience in a workshop led by Fanny RONDET (CashOnTime Sales Manager) during FORUMDIMO 2023.
Large operating territories with customer-supplier farmers
The OXYANE cooperative is the result of a merger on June 30, 2020 between the Bourg-en-Bresse-based Terre d’Alliance cooperative and the Vienne-based Dauphinoise group. It covers a large territory including the Rhône-Alpes region, and all or part of the neighbouring départements, with mixed populations: cereal farmers, livestock farmers, or farmers combining the two activities, but also arboriculturists and winegrowers. OXYANE is divided into five divisions: the plant division (7,000 farmers, sales €780 m, 1,900 employees); the livestock division (4 feed manufacturing plants); the machinery division (7 bases); the consumer division (78 stores, mainly Gamm Vert) and the egg division (800 million eggs produced/year).
To increase farmers’ remuneration, the group signs supply chain contracts with food retailers (Intermarché, McDo, Alpina pasta). Under these contracts, wheat is paid more than the base price, because the farmer complies with specific, environmentally-friendly specifications. The Group’s approach is based on a circular economy, so that one company’s production satisfies another’s needs, thereby limiting distribution costs. The group collects 800 thousand tonnes of cereals per year. Its biggest cereal customers are France, Italy and Spain.
Different working methods
Gilles GALLINA manages two teams: one in Bourg-en-Bresse and the other in Vienne. One person was dedicated to entering cheques in each entity using a time-consuming accounting tool: slowness, crashes and clerical errors were commonplace. “We were in a problematic post-merger context, as we had to make two IT environments cohabit and work together. The particularity of the cooperative is that our farmers are not only our customers, but also our suppliers. At the same time, they are also our shareholders, as they all hold shares in the cooperative. Every two weeks, we carry out a review of our members’ current accounts.” When the account is in credit, OXYANE pays the credit to the farmer: “Every fortnight, we have to be on time. When I arrived two and a half years ago, we had to stop entering payments while the accounts were being analyzed, which took about a week. Today, having unified our working methods and thanks to CashOnTime, we enter payments every day.”
CashOnTime: the natural choice for receivables management
Gilles GALLINA had seen a demonstration of the CashOnTime solution back in 2007, and had already implemented it in two entities. So the choice was made quickly, as was the installation. The main concern was to get the accounting system to understand the credit slips returned by CashOnTime. There are 59,000 open customers registered in the database and just over 176,000 open items. OXYANE has a license for 110,000 annual collections.
“For our members/customers, their payment process is simple: one invoice corresponds to one payment. Manual entry, with little added value, was therefore very time-consuming. Lettering is the poor relation of the finance department. But it is possible to automate tasks to free up team time, for example, for account analysis and reminders. I manage nine companies, including the cooperative. Between entering payments, clearing accounts every fortnight and managing 6,000 members/customers, it’s not possible to devote as much time to recording transfers,” says Gilles GALLINA.
A change in team attitude
Since January 2023, the staff has been transformed: “They are gradually becoming account managers who take responsibility for customer accounts for as long as they are active. They are in a position to respond to an account. From now on, as soon as the teams arrive at 8 a.m., everything that has been processed automatically has already been entered in the accounts. After that, it’s time to tackle the unallocated charges. Depending on the volume to be processed, an hour later the accounts are up to date and can be restarted.”
Managing special cases
Deployment took about two months. OXYANE has a large number of special cases involving the receipt of bank transfers. CashOnTime was able to take all these cases into account, including short-term credit offered by its banking partners and marketed by the cooperative to enable its farmers to finance the products they need for their harvests.
The importance of preparation for better accounts receivable management
According to Gilles GALLINA: “The key to success really lies in preparation, in the time taken to dissect all flows and check every wording. But because of a lack of discipline on the part of the banks or operational staff, inter-company cash transfers can still end up in the codes reserved for customer payments, which worsens the lettering rate. The tool has become the partner of every account manager, and “to go back would create a riot.”
He adds, “Now I have teams who can finally devote themselves to dunning the payment of customer invoices, which wasn’t the case before.”
Data capture to unify working practices
At the end of 2023, we will move on to phase 2 of the project and launch automatic check entry. “We don’t intend to do away with the possibility of paying by cheque, as our members/customers are very attached to it, and for some it’s the only solution in the absence of a reliable Internet connection,” explains Gilles GALLINA.
Technically, Fanny RONDET explains that the CashOnTime Capture brick is a scanner equipped with an application. When you open the morning mail, you place the cheques with or without coupons, CashOnTime Capture reads the handwritten indications and transforms them into digital data. The tool then performs a number of checks (e.g., is the cheque signed, and is the amount in figures equal to the amount written on the cheque?) Next, the application sends a global csv file containing one line per cheque and a pdf image per dematerialized cheque to CashOnTime Allocation, which applies the usual method: identification of the issuer, recording and automatic storage of the necessary data for future use. “He works on the address block for each keyword. CashOnTime Allocation does the lettering and then you generate the information to the ERP, including the paper slip because you’re still obliged to send the check to the bank. It can also generate the digital slip, a TLS file, which your communication tool will automatically send back.
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