Controlling Accounting Transactions for Nationwide Retailer

Solutions for Global Supply Chain and Logistics Management

 “Global Archives came in and quickly determined our needs. They worked to schedule and babysat us through the transition. They are a great company and over the last 5 years have been an invaluable vendor.” – Erik Milham, Director of IT for Crown Bolt

Managing accounts payable at a retailer with hundreds of locations nationwide can be daunting and requires a sophisticated, Internet-based system built upon dozens of modules which all interface with each store location. A key module is one that manages tracking of freight bills of lading and associated invoices for inventory movement. Although payment for purchases resides within the retailer’s Accounts Payable Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) payment module, reconciliation and monitoring movement of goods is done manually. This creates a labor-intensive process.

The Home Depot’s Crown Bolt division procures, ships, and manages the retailer’s hardware product inventory of nuts, bolts, washers, and other fastener products. Much of the company’s product originates overseas; the associated customs and freight forwarding paperwork is extensive and high-volume. The Home Depot realized the bottleneck created by its approval and processing of payments, validation of receipt of goods, and vendor relations required a more efficient and less costly method, in order to stay competitive.

Crown Bolt’s director of Information Technologies selected Global Archives to lead conversion of its existing paper system and to automate tracking and validation of freight bills of lading. This solution would expedite the processing cycle, while reducing costs and improving vendor relations.

Seamless, Cloud-based Data Strategies for Partner Transactions

Global Archives’ solution is built upon a SQL database, wherein each document in every Crown Bolt transaction is scanned and assigned a unique “Document Number” folder containing key index values. The document imaging and indexing process relies upon a data capture system, such that the location of each document’s number is standardized and readable.

The document number is entered into a validation utility that searches Crown Bolt’s entire database of invoices and purchase orders in order to extract key information. Key information includes dates, vendors, quantities, part numbers, and purchase orders, and is determined by the AP department with guidance from Global Archives’ database designers. Each scanned document, together with its associated database, is uploaded to LockBox as the primary repository.

Global Archives’ audit and implementation services yielded an added benefit for Crown Bolts: reduced audit time during the company’s frequent vendor and governmental audits. LockBox solutions allow client Administrators to grant temporary access to auditors while restricting their inspections only to pertinent data files, thereby reducing audit time and client disruption, while ensuring data privacy. In fact, Crown Bolt audits are now completed off site, with little or no disruption to their daily operations.

Global Archives formed a design and validation utility using LockBox that met Crown Bolt’s goals of reducing overhead tied to tracking of invoices, improving vendor relations through elimination of over- and under-payments, enabling quick and accurate location and sharing of document files among and between vendors, and expedited payment process.