Franklin Sports Automates Bank Lockbox with OCR
Franklin Sports got its start in 1946 as a regional brand of sporting goods products. Irving H. Franklin, who co-founded Franklin Sports with his brother Sydney Franklin, brought the innovative idea of centering a complete line of products on a single athlete – Joe Namath. Over the years Franklin Sports has affiliated with the best in sports, including world-class athletes like Sugar Ray Leonard, David Robinson, Dan Marino, and Barry Bonds. Franklin Sports today are the industry leader as the premier batting glove company, and custom fits batting gloves for Major League Baseball players. Franklin Sports also work with the NFL, NHL, and the MLS franchises.
Challenge
Prior to the Cashbook implementation, Franklin Sports were struggling with a Cash Application automation tool from another provider. Franklin had several daily issues they were running into, issues that were taking a lot of their valuable time to rectify. So, instead of the Cash App software saving time in their organization, it was actually adding to their time spent on Cash Application. Some of the issues the company was having are listed below.
- The length of time taken to send the matched data file to the Franklin server, it had to go through five separate processes to post to the GL. It took two hours to process the cash, and five hours to transition the file from the cloud to the Franklin server.
- Some postings to the General Ledger (GL) were only partially posted, which resulted in missing lines that had to be manually resolved.
- Users could not process other batches while data was being sent to the server.
- Users had to log off and log on again due to blank screens after each batch processing.
- With Deductions, the users had to manually key in the opposite adjustment entry for each individual deduction.
- Lack of safeguards against user input errors or user omissions. Some batches were being verified when they shouldn’t, which resulted in unbalanced batches and mistakes.
- Incorrect matching of invoice numbers against Franklin Sports customers.
- The IT department were spending countless hours each week to manually fix the above errors.
- The software Franklin was using was configured in the background, and it was not customized to suit their needs.
- The users had no option but to work with the set configuration, any issues and they had to raise a ticket for support issues.
- The users were struggling to get any resolutions on their raised issues or even get feedback on proposed improvements to their processes.
Solution
Cashbook is not an ‘out of the box’ software solution, it is a fully customizable financial software solution. So, the Cash Application solution for Franklin was fully customized to suit their exact requirements. Franklin communicated these needs directly to Cashbook, and then Cashbook got to work on solving the many issues Franklin was previously experiencing. Once Cashbook was implemented at Franklin, the results were instantaneous and highly effective.
Cashbook fully automated the Cash Application process for Franklin, we worked with AM Financials and the changeover to Enterprise Financials. We were able to fully automate the processing of EDI files and used OCR technology to automate the bank lockbox process. Cashbook processed the same batch that took 7 hours previously, the Cashbook software took just 45 mins to process the cash and 5 mins to post it to Franklin’s ERP, XA/MAPICS, – a time saving of over 6hrs.
As you can see, these solutions result in significant time savings and increased automation and control. Below are some of the ways Cashbook achieved these outcomes for Franklin Sports.
Increased automation through Cashbook
- Automated import of EDI files for ACH and Wire customer payments, these files were completed for Franklin customer base.
- Excel imports automated for ACH and Wire customer payments, these were completed for Franklin customer base.
- Automated Matching of Invoices took place by using our configurable algorithms matching. The algorithm was matched by using the Invoice Number, PO Number, and by the stripping of prefixes and suffixes.
- Auto-creation of GL write-offs. Configurable algorithms were used to auto-create the GL Splits, which are currently operating at 89.4% automation levels, and also to directly write-off the minor differences.
- Posting to AM Financials – One-step posting directly from the CBK Client Application. Automatic straight-through processing to the AR Ledger and the GL. Full traceability of ledger transactions back to source in CBK, and for also posting reports.
- Accounts Receivable (AR) write-offs and off-sets. Excel Imports of AR Items to be automatically netted off, and Excel Imports of open small-balance AR Items to be written off in the GL.
Cashbook OCR Lockbox functionality
- Cashbooks newly developed Optical Character Recognition (OCR) functionality was used on Franklin’s Lockbox Remittance Images.
- Cashbook were able to fully automate the lockbox process for Franklin, as the OCR technology cuts down on the number of keystrokes required to obtain the data from the bank lockbox.
Deductions automation
- Auto-creation of Deductions for Franklin, currently operating at 80.15% automation levels, thus reducing the time consuming manual process of before.
- Cashbook used a configurable algorithm to auto-create these deductions, that do not require an adjustment record against them.
- As there is no adjustment record required with Cashbook, this has halved the number of records when posting.
- Reason Codes were automatically assigned based on the customers varying references.
- Algorithms were used to group and summarize these deductions before posting by Customer, Amounts and Reason Codes.
Greater financial control
Cashbook Cash Manager provides look-ups and exports of:
- All open AR Items, all AR and/or by Customer.
- Customer Payment History.
- Paid Invoices History.
- Deductions History.
- GL Splits History.
- Customer Aging, automatically updated daily.
Results
Cashbook came in and took the time to listen to, and really understand, the problems we were having. They modified their software in some instances to solve specific issues. Their flexibility and experience in cash automation, resulted in considerable improvements to the efficiency of our financial processes. Highly recommend the Cashbook team to other companies.
