Success Story: How a natural gas exporter centralized its AP processes and reporting

Natural Gas Exporter

Revenue: $40M

Employees: 201-500

Headquarters: Houston, TX

Industry: Oil & Gas
 

KPIs:

• Optimized Decision-Making: Improved control over outbound cashflows and enabled more effective decision-making with accurate, consistent data and real-time access to liabilities and payments.
• Cost Efficiency: Significant cost savings by eliminating manual operations and reducing the need for additional headcount.
• Data Accuracy & Transparency: Improved data integrity and transparency through enhanced data validation and automation with detailed status tracking.
• Global Process Standardization: Standardized and automated invoice approval and exception handling processes to reduce the number of times AP touches an invoice.

Business Needs

The seventh-largest liquid natural gas export facility globally and the second largest in the United States had a clear goal in mind: to gain complete visibility and control over their outbound payments. They turned to Serrala, a trusted partner, to help them rapidly automate their processes on their existing SAP system. It was also important that they chose a solution that enabled them to transition to another system in the future, ensuring the company’s long-term needs were met.

While the company processes a relatively small volume of invoices each month, many of the incoming invoices are for large dollar amounts and must go through a complex approval process. The international nature of their business also required close attention to the tax and freight charges on the invoices to ensure accurate payment.

When they reached out to Serrala, they were experiencing the following challenges: 

• Time-consuming and error-prone manual data validation and entry after invoice capture
• Complex and inefficient approvals process for high-value invoices
• Sensitive invoices needed to be routed directly to the legal or tax department, bypassing AP entirely
• Difficulty creating and approving service entry sheets for service-based invoices
• Joint venture projects required line items on a single invoice to be paid from different bank accounts
• Manual process made it difficult to manage international taxation and unplanned freight charges in a standardized way 
• Cumbersome audit reporting requirements  

The company was resolute in their determination to find a solution that would enable them to handle these challenges and provide more control and visibility over invoice processing, reporting and cash forecasting. This strategic goal was at the forefront of their decision-making process.
 

Solution

The Natural Gas exporter selected the Serrala AP Automation solution for its superior data validation, intelligently automated exception handling and approvals processes, and robust reporting capabilities. The solution's ability to automatically match supplier invoices to purchase orders using defined business rules was a key factor. This automation significantly reduced the risk of human errors and provided real-time and role-appropriate access to invoice information for reviewers and approvers, ensuring efficient and reliable performance.

All invoices that passed the validation rules and achieved a 3-way match were auto-posted. For service invoices, the solution made it easy for the buyer to automatically generate service entry sheets based on the original purchase order. This means that the system could create a detailed record of the services received based on the purchase order, which enabled those invoices to be matched and posted without AP intervention. Those requiring human processing or exception handling were automatically notified via email with the required actions.

The goal was to ultimately reduce the complexity of their AP processes within a global invoice hub, and gain the following:

• Real-time information on current liabilities and pending payments
• Ability to track invoice status from capture through to payment
• Enhanced data validation against vendor, purchase order and accounting information in SAP systems
• Standardize and automate the invoice approval and exception handling processes to reduce the number of times AP touches an invoice.
• Increase the auto-posting rate for fixed cost and recurring invoices such as rent.
• Prevent auto-posting for invoices for selected company codes, GL accounts, and cost center combinations.
• Define unique invoice routing and approval rules for high-value invoices or invoices with sensitive information.
• Define rules to manage freight and unplanned freight charges consistently for every invoice.
• Enable joint venture invoices to be split and paid from different bank accounts
• Ensure the tax department reviewed any invoices from outside the US.
   

Results

Serrala AP Automation Solution empowered the natural gas exporter to centralize all its AP processing and reporting into a single system and view. The company now has complete control over its accounts payable process and has been able to dramatically increase the number of invoices that can be auto posted for payment.

Some of the highlights include:

• Cost Efficiency: Significant cost savings by eliminating manual operations and reducing the need for additional headcount.
• Data Accuracy & Transparency: Enhanced data integrity and transparency through enhanced data validation and automation with detailed status tracking.
• Optimized Decision-Making: Improved control over outbound cashflows and enabled more effective decision-making with accurate, consistent data and real-time access to liabilities and payments.
• Operational Speed: Faster time to payment for suppliers and simplified month/quarter/year-end closings through automated invoice postings and simplified audit reporting.
• Enhanced Security: Strengthened security and better fraud control measures with an AP automation solution that was completely embedded in their SAP system.