How to Streamline Operations with Fuel Transactional Document Automation by Art King, Axxis Software
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How to Streamline Operations with Fuel Transactional Document Automation by Art King, Axxis Software Axxis Software, part of OPIS by IHS Markit How to Streamline Operations with Fuel Transactional Document Automation Intro: Doing More with Less Here’s a story about a business problem that may ring very true to your own experiences. Linda works hard every day in the accounting department of a growing Southwest fuel distributor. Some days it feels like the paperwork is a mountain she can’t overcome – gathering, organizing, entering and disseminating information just so customer invoices can be sent and bills can be paid. She and her three associates are knee-deep each day in BOLs, supplier invoices and delivery tickets. 1. They start by gathering the paperwork from drivers and carriers together with supplier Invoices and BOLs they download and print from various websites. 2. Then they sort, match and staple the BOLs to the appropriate delivery tickets and supplier invoices. 3. Then they must double-check handwritten and often stained paperwork to make sure the data they have gathered and hand entered is correct. Sometimes that means chasing down the carrier to confirm numbers and delivery locations. 4. If this isn’t challenging enough, suppliers are constantly making product changes and using cryptic codes to reference products, terminals and other information. Linda needs to automate the collection, collating, matching and billing process so that she and her team can save time, focus on exceptions and process invoices faster – regardless of whether the data source is a downloadable file, scanned image or handwritten notes on a form. Sound familiar to you? Axxis Software, part of OPIS by IHS Markit 2 How to Streamline Operations with Fuel Transactional Document Automation Automating the Fuel Transactional Document Process in Four Steps Many organizations in the fuel industry, are faced with challenges just like Linda’s. It’s a constant balancing act to try to streamline operations to save time, cut costs and shorten the reconciliation and billing cycles, despite having fewer resources and a growing stack of paperwork. The process of matching orders to driver manifests, BOLs and freight invoices to expedite the customer invoicing process is labor (and paper) intensive, and the responsibility often falls to a handful of individuals. That drains resources, delays reconciliation and is prone to credit/rebills because of errors. Furthermore, the accounting staff is left to reconcile fuel invoices received from suppliers by matching them up against the same stack of BOLs, driver manifests and their pricing reports to make sure they are being billed correctly. Accounting departments create spreadsheets, forms, cards and other tools to help make the paper flow easier, but these added steps tend to increase the paper trail and delay the billing and reconciliation process. There’s the added problem when the lead person goes on vacation and their back-up is left to struggle through piles of transactions and the manual matching process. Getting a complete view of fuel movement from dispatch to delivery – as well as the corresponding supplier/terminal, carrier and financial transactions – is often a manual, time-consuming and error- prone process. But it doesn’t have to be. Technology solutions can automate the collection, translation and archiving of electronic fuel transactions, as well as match documents and/or export them to your accounting system for reconciliation. But, where to start? We’ve broken down the four key steps involved in automating fuel transaction documents. Axxis Software, part of OPIS by IHS Markit 3 How to Streamline Operations with Fuel Transactional Document Automation Step 1: Automate Capture For Linda and her team, the capture step is a manual process that involves visiting websites, printing documents, checking emails and gathering paperwork from suppliers. More time is spent gathering BOL/delivery tickets and driver manifests from drivers, third-party haulers and dispatch, only to often end up with illegible or missing forms. CAPTURE The first step is to leverage software technology to automate the capture and download of electronic transactional documents, such as supplier BOLs, invoices, credit card memos, EFTs and other transactions from websites, FTP, emails and other sources. For handwritten documents or scanned images, Document Management Services (DMS) offerings can provide OCR scanning, data entry and QA validation with exception reporting. In Linda’s case, with automated capture and DMS, over 90% of transactions can be collected automatically, saving countless hours of manual effort and greatly reducing the number of errors. Automate the capture of supplier transactions in addition to pricing. Axxis Software, part of OPIS by IHS Markit 4 How to Streamline Operations with Fuel Transactional Document Automation Step 2: Translate and Normalize Data Over the years, Linda and her team have become quite adept at creating charts, grids and spreadsheets to help them unravel the cryptic codes the suppliers use for various terminals, products, carriers and other information. The challenge comes when new people come on board or one of the team is out of the office and a back-up has to take over. The new person has to relearn the codes, which causes the process to slow down and increases the risk of errors. The solution is to incorporate an archiving tool that automatically translates and normalizes the data in order to provide an “apples to apples” comparison between different types of documents. The software can translate various file types and supplier codes into a readable format, making it easy to match up, sort and filter by product, terminal and carrier. Electronic documents such as Supplier BOLs and Invoices are captured, translated, normalized and archived for matching and viewing purposes. Axxis Software, part of OPIS by IHS Markit 5 How to Streamline Operations with Fuel Transactional Document Automation Step 3: Auto-match Documents One of the most time-consuming tasks is collating, sorting and matching up documents, including BOLs, deliveries, freight and supplier invoices. Linda’s team tends to process batches manually using spreadsheets and a calculator to make sure totals match up both on individual transactions and for the batch. It’s a time-consuming process that often results in billing delays to the customer, which in turn means slower cash flow receipts. She can either bill the customer in advance of all the support documents – opting to perform a credit rebill if there are issues – or wait until all the documents are in and reconciled before the billing goes out. Using industry software to auto-match the documents means Linda no longer has to choose between these two options. Data is automatically matched to show exactly what and how much product was picked up and where it was delivered, allowing her team to focus only on data exceptions. This significantly reduces time spent validating supplier invoices, as well as improves accuracy to eliminate the need for credits and rebills. Electronic documents such as Deliveries, BOLs and Supplier Invoices are matched and validated and hyperlinked for viewing of all documents in one place. Axxis Software, part of OPIS by IHS Markit 6 How to Streamline Operations with Fuel Transactional Document Automation Step 4: Interface to Accounting The final step is for Linda and her team to enter supplier invoices and EFTs into Accounts Payable and hand key any order/delivery changes, as well as credit card receipts, into AR/billing. This further slows down the billing/collections cycle and presents another opportunity for manual errors. An automated system can interface the data directly into your back office accounting system, eliminating costly data entry errors and expediting the entire billing process. In some cases, the transaction matching system may even have the option to generate and send an invoice and then pass the invoice data directly into AR for collections purposes. This helps maximize your available working capital and cash flows. Transactional data is gathered, translated and archived electronically with the attached original document(s). INVOICE DATE: 9/30/2016 INVOICE NO. 388912 DUE DATE: 10/3/2016 FROM: ACME PETROLEUM TRANSPORT 123 MAIN ST. ROCKVILLE, MD 20852 (301) 555-1234 ABC OIL BOL: 1438733 PO BOX 999 BOL2: ST. PAUL, MN 55108 BOL3: BOL4: Date BOL Orgin Consignee Product Quantity Fate Amount 9/23/2016 1438733 DORAVILLE OLD DIXIE CITGO (#381050) GAS 8001 0.01659 $132.74 PO No. PC#5215 DTIME 0.5 60 $30.00 MINFR 499 0.01659 $8.28 F 141.02 0.16 $22.56 XTERM 4 40 $160.00 Axxis Software, part of OPIS by IHS Markit 7 How to Streamline Operations with Fuel Transactional Document Automation Conclusion A successful automated document management processing solution allows your business to: • Save time and resources through automated capture, translation and matching of fuel transaction documents • Reduce errors attributed to manual data entry • Shorten billing/collection cycles with faster and more accurate billing • Increase flexibility and working capital by getting paid faster • Free up critical resources to focus on tasks devoted to growing the business Interested in learning how this could work for your business? Click here to sign up for a customized demo. BOLs Auto t -Mat ch & Correc ch & Correc at -M Accounting t Auto Invoices Deliveries Auto-Match & Correct Axxis Software, part of OPIS by IHS Markit 8 How to Streamline Operations with Fuel Transactional Document Automation About the Author Art King is the Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Axxis Software, part of OPIS by IHS Markit. He brings over 35 years of industry and high-tech experience, including a unique blend of enterprise software, business management, sales and operations expertise. Prior to joining Axxis, Art was the VP of Sales & Marketing at Slingshot, an e-commerce supply chain management software company, as well as VP of Marketing for the Cedar Group, a UK-based publicly traded enterprise software and solutions provider.