Overview

A family-owned eCommerce paper distributor has been a staple for consumers and businesses in New York City (NYC), New Jersey, and across the United States for more than a half century. Recognizing consistent growth over its history, the business owners have taken their company from storing inventory in various NYC basements to running two 40,000 sq. ft. warehouses in just fifteen years. The owners took their business from a brick-and-mortar company to selling products online through a variety of marketplaces including Amazon, Staples, Office Depot, Wal-Mart, and Target. However, the client’s continued growth presented challenges for this Top 1,000 internet retailer that its existing ERP system could not meet.

Challenges

While the company was consistently able to meet delivery deadlines through their selected channels, the recordkeeping was unable to keep pace with delivery. The disconnected ERP system was not sized for the growth of the business, resulting in reporting and analysis being 45 to 90 days behind the large volume of transactions they needed to process.

Working with a variety of marketplaces, the client and was sending tens of thousands of invoices each month and entering and processing each invoice manually. Invoices turned into remittances and remittances needed to be matched. A large distributor like Amazon sends a remittance for 30,000 invoices, and the client would need to process every single invoice and track both structured and unstructured deductions for everything from storage fees to shipping fees.

Bank reconciliations and financial reporting processes were always significantly behind schedule. With backlogs piling up, they turned to Citrin Cooperman for a modern solution that supported their immediate needs and future growth plans.

Results

Citrin Cooperman was able to identify the client’s specific needs and implemented a two-pronged solution. The initial step was to upgrade the existing ERP system to handle the immense strain of disconnected and underpowered business management software. The client decided on a true cloud ERP solution from NetSuite.

While NetSuite delivered immediate value, the company still needed more help to manage invoice reporting and reconciliation. Citrin Cooperman developed a solution that allowed the client to automatically import invoices into the solution, saving hundreds of hours of manual labor. Additionally, we built a custom solution to handle payments from online marketplaces. The solution is designed to automatically apply payments from marketplaces, record both structured and unstructured fees, mark invoices as paid, and generate a deposit record in NetSuite.

Key Benefits

• Client was able to increase the timeliness of their invoice processing, allowing their finance team to focus on more meaningful tasks.
• With a NetSuite solution, the client can now allocate a single individual to process payments from over 30,000 monthly invoices, with reconciliations completed in hours, not months, without user intervention.
• Client can now process and facilitate claw backs for unauthorized deductions. This allows the client to recoup money they either did not know they were losing or were unable to recover.