Each month, suppliers send statements to the Procurement & Accounts Payable team to be reconciled against internal accounts. These have high volume and take a considerable amount of time for the teams.

Statements are received monthly from ~5000 suppliers in a ‘mostly standardised’ format, containing the necessary data for reconciliation against the centralised business ledger. Where any discrepancies exist, the central system is used to query invoices and charges. Once the account has been reconciled, the working spreadsheet is saved to a centralised folder. Reconciliation is done in a prioritised order. Systems: Central System, MS Outlook, MS Excel

A scheduled robot is run daily at close of business to identify any new statement arrivals from suppliers and process them accordingly using iOCR technology, the SME will receive the output report to action. Analysts will still be needed associate the explanations sent by suppliers to their statements.