In order to grow fast in the retail business, it is essential to provide solutions to every aspect of the retail market. The payment solution is an indispensable aspect of delivering excellent service and gaining customer trust. With a solution of greater speed and security, retailers are more likely to win and hold on to customers, enabling them to focus on other aspects of their business such as shipping, staffing, product marketing, and customer service. There are plenty of payment solutions providers, but retailers are correct to trust those who have a great track record in this business. Cashbook, one of those companies, has been delivering its clients automation through its cash management software since 1992.
About the Growth of Cashbook
Cashbook is a software company with 25 years of experience automating cash application and reconciling company’s bank accounts. They are based in Ireland but only 5% of their business is located there. Their software is installed in 25 different countries and interfaces with over 200 banks. It is a highly specialized boutique software company focused on specific configurable solutions for the global marketplace.
The solutions from this company have been deployed across approximately 10 different ERP systems, including SAP, JDE, XA, LX, Sage, Oracle, Dynamics, System21, Tolas, and Smartstream. In 2017, they are targeting a standout year of 50% growth. Their purpose is to build super intelligent cash management software solutions, which maximize the automation of high volume financial transactions. The Cashbook’s teams have a deep understanding of Cash Application, Accounts Payable, and Bank Rec functions as well as banking and ERP technologies and processes. Their cash management software technology helps the clients create more intelligent, more automated, and more feature rich financial operations.
The Leader with All the Expertise
Greg Coulter, the CEO of Cashbook, is from New Zealand and has lived in the USA, UK, and Ireland. He has 18 years of experience working in Cashbook and has seen the product grow and develop. As an Accountant and business owner, he understands the importance of cashflow to companies which is where Cashbook is entirely focused.
Greg holds a 1st Class Honors degree in Economics and Finance from the University of Otago in New Zealand, and is a CIMA qualified Accountant. Greg joined Cashbook in 1999. He has completed Cashbook cash management software implementations in England, The Netherlands, America, Belgium, Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland. In 2001, he was promoted to the role of Client Director and in 2002 to the role of CEO.
Greg has built an international team of experts with an incredible wealth of experience in cash application, deductions, and reconciliation projects. The management team has been in place for 10 plus years and the company is growing fast.
Present and Future Scenario of Retail Industry
From a financial innovation point of view, the company sees e-commerce growing at a faster rate. With more retailers moving towards an integrated commerce model, where the brand has multiple selling touch-points for consumers to interact with. With additional financial payment options, there will come greater complexity at the back end for reconciliations. Retail operations that invest in technology facilitates automation of data files, which will be able to expand operations and profits without costly headcount and overheads.
Cashbook’s teams don’t see Block chain payments affecting retail operations in 2017. However, in 2018 they are expecting some disruptive technologies to be made available that will change the way consumers pay. With these changes, retailers will need new tools to reconcile their cash.
The Range of Capabilities of the Solutions
Cashbook focuses exclusively on reconciling and automating money received from customers. In the retail sector, the company has specialized capabilities to handle auto-coding of charges and write-offs that need to posted/coded to the store level. For the likes of Five Guys and TGI Friday’s, they saved a huge amount of daily journal transactions with their automation capabilities.
The company worked out methods for auto-reconcile sales against cash at a store level and built flexible matching tools that allow users to apply pattern matching to data with different characteristics. These data stripping/switching capabilities give users real power to quickly and efficiently automate thousands of transactions, giving the users time to focus on true financial errors or frauds.
Bank reconciliations with multiple store locations require knowledge of bank data, ledger information, and ERP postings. The Cashbook’s solution is more than just a point solution. The company offers deep ERP integration so that users are directly linked to their bank and financial data. What stands out for our customers is our support levels. The company focuses on a limited number of projects in a year and deliver stand-out savings and return on investment.
The Benefits for Clients
Many of the Cashbook’s customers boast savings in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. They get these benefits from reduced resources and higher cashflow control, facilitating better treasury decisions. Having more financial control over cash can make the difference between opening a new store or not.
“There are more than just financial savings. Our clients get to sleep at night knowing that financial controls are in place that will keep them in their jobs,” Greg said.
The Experience Speaks
When asked about the challenges and difficulties, Greg said, “Like many retail operations we have learnt how important our brand is to us. For us every project matters as our reputation is really what has driven our success. Each successful project leads to two more projects and the pattern repeats. We work with the companies after a two way evaluation process that ensures we work on the projects, which have an excellent return on investment.”
The Cashbook brand is recognized globally for reconciliation and automation. Their success right now has been built on many previous years of success. Being selective in the projects a company takes on is vitally important. It is a major lesson Cashbook learned from working over the years.
“Get your financial systems in place at the beginning. Don’t wait until you have a problem before trying to solve reconciliation issues,” Greg’s advice to the new entrants in this business.
As the saying goes, “a stitch in time saves nine.” The company has met companies who waited too long, lost financial control and people lost their jobs as an outcome. If Cashbook is involved early one can be assured of financial control.
Promising Future Plans
The Cashbook teams are building a true cash forecasting solution from their core database. They want users to be able to auto-match, reconcile and forecast their bank balances from within Cashbook.
They are delighted to be announcing the release of Cashbook v6.0. This web version release follows in the footsteps of v5.6.2 released in February 2017. It will give their user base more functionality than ever before. They have added notes, attachments, OCR capabilities, analytics, and a lot of automation. “Our matching rules have been re-written to accommodate the latest technology capabilities. We will develop our software to work with Blockchain technologies in 2018 and really disrupt the marketplace,” Greg and his team promised.
