If we don’t have a remit, if we don’t have a check image, an email, or a web portal, the system can predict, it can find a set of invoices that will match that cash amount. We’ve actually picked up about a 5% cash application matching rate from this feature alone. It’s really incredible.
WESCO’s cash application scenario was complex as they had to manually deal with multiple payment formats like electronic funds, credit cards, checks, and numerous remittance sources. They were in a predicament and were looking for a more efficient way to deal with the challenges mentioned below:
Remittances came in from multiple sources in varied formats, meaning standard tools weren’t enough for applying cash. Their analysts spent most of their time extracting remittances from emails, EDIs, and 20+ A/P portals, which hampered their efficiency. They also encountered missing remittance scenarios that required multiple interactions with the customer.
Banks did not provide processing support for the reconciliation of e-payments, leaving the team to perform manual work. With low-quality check images and remittances flowing through disparate sources for e-payments, their analysts manually linked every payment and remittance and coding deductions.
Payments and remittances often came in separately, thus making invoice matching difficult. The manual reconciliation of these made the process laborious and time-consuming.
WESCO was looking for a solution that would act as a single source of truth and was easy to deploy, and easy to train staff on. They believed that a cloud solution would make their cash application more sustainable and scalable. WESCO thus turned to a cloud solution with the following expectations:
Wesco, a Fortune 500 company, is known for its global electrical, communications, and utility distribution and supply chain solutions. It has operations in 17 countries worldwide and is associated with many Fortune 1,000 companies that required a global strategic partner to efficiently and consistently support their operations based on their locations.
Wholesale distribution
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
$8.3 Billion
Cash Application Cloud
WESCO leveraged the Cash Application Cloud from HighRadius to address all their challenges and have a straight-through cash posting in place. The artificial intelligence-based solution brought in the following functionalities:
The email remittance, OCR, and web portal remittance-capture feature of the solution handles auto aggregating the remittance data from all the sources. The email remittance capture ensured digital processing for a high-quality image with no email management requirement to process remittances coming in via email. Furthermore, while the OCR capture processed paper check remittances, the web portal remittance captured remittances from the customer’s website with no need for the team’s intervention.
The Cash Application Cloud corroborated seamless capture of payment information across all standard bank file formats (BAI, BAI2, EDI820, EDI823, MT940) and in multiple languages. The solution also captured all critical information such as payer name, bank fees, and currency to ensure faster payment remittance linking.
AI-Based remittance prediction suggests missing remittances to payments coming in and allows the analyst to choose from multiple suggestions provided by the solution. It allows the remittances to be matched based on various fields like P.O. number, receipt, or receiving data. Furthermore, the AI based customer master recommendations allow regular maintenance of the customer master data such as payer name and MICR mapping saving.
The Cash Application Cloud seamlessly integrates with other A/R processes to capture promises to pays as remittances and claim data for deduction coding. It allows identifying, matching, and automatic coding of deductions. It also assures the collections and credit teams are on the same page when a payment comes in and cash is applied to avoid undesirable dunning.
The HighRadius solution was efficient enough to cater to WESCO’s customized business requirements where it helped them close invoices at a parent account level and post disputes at the customer level.
HighRadius Corporation
Westlake 4 Building (BP Campus)
200 Westlake Park Blvd.
8th floor
Houston, TX 77079
