Ferraro Foods Streamlines Reconciliations and Close Using Planful and Trintech

Ferraro Foods delivers delicious products to over 8,000 customers in 26 states. As the company grew and locations/subsidiaries multiplied, the finance team found gaining an accurate and timely view of its financial performance increasingly challenging.

As Ferraro Foods moved to Planful for financial planning, close, and consolidation, it looked upstream and recognized account reconciliations as the key to faster, more accurate financial data. Adding Adra® by Trintech eliminated repetition and added accountability to its reconciliation process, saving its accounting team as much as one day per month.

Financial data resided in one of two ERP systems. With consolidations running in Excel, errors typically weren’t noticed until the close process was in motion or completed.

With a transition to Planful already underway, Johann Cabe, VP of FP&A at Ferraro Foods, and the team decided to streamline its financial performance management processes from the beginning, at reconciliation, by automating and eliminating much of the manual effort. The company had relied on an entirely manual email and spreadsheet-driven process that lacked accountability.

With the help of CFO Solutions and a certified Trintech implementer, Ferraro Foods was able to gain control of its financial close calendar and automate its extensive volume reconciliations.

Ferraro Foods chose to enhance its Planful implementation by automating its reconciliation process using Adra by Trintech to standardize, automate, and accelerate reconciliation workflows. It would also make data more trusted as it flowed into close and consolidation processes and beyond.

Ferraro Foods mainly relies on Adra Matcher to reduce the time spent on month-end transaction matching. It can match and reconcile large volumes of transactions quickly and accurately, including daily banking transactions, even across different systems and data sources. This eliminates the repetition of balance sheet reconciliation for a fast, accurate, and easy-to-manage financial close while allowing time to concentrate on the most important accounts.

“Reconciliation takes a lot of time, but it’s mostly a redundant effort,” added Johann. “I’d say 80% of the work is just matching across thousands of transactions. So don’t do it; let Adra take care of it. Adra turns hours into an hour or less. Across our team of four, Adra saves about two hours per day. We’re saving a day’s worth of effort every day.”

That time saved during reconciliation gives analysts the freedom and flexibility to focus on more valuable efforts, and the reconciliations from Adra immediately flow into Planful to kickstart close and consolidation.

By implementing Adra, Ferraro Foods significantly improved visibility and gained control of its financial close calendar. With Adra’s period-end close and task management features, Ferraro Foods could track and monitor close activities, assign and ensure completion of close tasks, set deadlines, and collaborate across teams and people.

“Just like Planful gives us visibility into and control over our financial consolidation process, Adra gives us the same for reconciliation,” Johann said. “Are the account reconciliations done? Are they done correctly? Have they been submitted on time? There’s a constant set of checks and balances to ensure all components of our close process are done correctly and on time. And, we can rely on Planful as the system of record for auditing, too, because we trust the data.”

As a result, Ferraro Foods has achieved impressive results, with their close duration reduced from 10 business days to just four and a half days. This improvement was attributed to Adra’s Reconciliation capabilities, which enabled the identification and resolution of errors before the close process commenced.