The Client:
A real-estate conglomerate that operates as a strategic partner and solution provider to select clients worldwide, with special emphasis on the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and Turkey.
Scope of Work
Complete range of real estate accounting services including accounts payable, accounts receivable, maintenance of general ledger and subsidiary ledgers, month-end closure, fixed assets accounting, tenant schedules, and trust account reconciliation.
Process Bottlenecks
Owing to its size and scale, the organization faced a lag in its accounting processes owing to untrained staff. This further led to incorrect property allocation of collections and expenses. The processes fell behind best-in-class standards, and they lacked supervision to enforce and align processes. These led to:
- Overdue financials of 60 days
- Overdue service charge demand notices by 30 days
- Tenant Payments schedule delay of 45 days
- Unreconciled 4 Mn pound in the trust account
- Delay in property owner payments by 60 days
Cogneesol’s Optimization Solution
Cogneesol’s accounting team examined and identified the gaps in operations that had led to the piling up of the numerous backlogs, introduced an operating model taking into account people skills and available technology. Specific policy changes were injected to:
- Reclassify maintenance expenses with supporting documentation
- Finalize optimal amount for service charge demand, prepare notices, and dispatch within a week
- Redesign and improve customer inquiry, response timelines, and cash application process
- Reconcile the trust account on a monthly basis
We reached out to Cogneesol for best-in-class operations. As promised, they turned us around within no time bringing about timeliness and compliance to our business. They now managed our accounts end-to-end without a hitch.
Impact Delivered
Working closely with the client’s accounting team we delivered the significant impact that included:
- Backlog covered in 10 days
- Month-end closure activity optimized by 5%
- Service charge generation timeliness improved by 60% and maintained within agreed timelines
- Improved cash flow, DSO reduced from 60 days to 35 days (41%) and customer satisfaction rating jumped from 84% to 98%
- Reconciled Trust account and dues paid off to owners with vendor satisfaction rate climbing to 97% compared to 90% in the previous years
Client Testimonials
It is always a pleasure to learn that the work we do has positively impacted our clients and that they are happy to share their experiences.
We used to suffer from huge volumes of duplicate invoices and missed vendor payments. Cogneesol streamlined our Accounts Payable process by centralizing data, eliminating data entry, and streamlining the invoice workflow. This has not only eliminated the problem of duplicate invoices but has also standardized the payment system and has regulated our working capital management, making us financially stronger and in-control of our operations.
Cogneesol transformed our Accounts Receivables processes, freed up cash, and optimized our working capital position. The team does a thorough job of checking the accuracy of their bills, invoices, or credit terms, apply for cash payments correctly, do not override credit limits, follow up with customers in a timely manner when payments are past due, collect and apply cash correctly. These have made our Accounts Receivables position very efficient!
We automated our Accounts Payable division with the help of Cogneesol’s team of qualified accountants. They came in with game-changing process improvements, including the elimination of data-entry errors with automated OCRs, the establishment of a ‘No PO No Pay’ policy, ensuring a system of timely payments, and elimination late fees. All of these have changed the face of our AP books. We are now in a great position to make strategic decisions.
Cogneesol increased our operational efficiency with timely payments and efficient management of our working capital. We are impressed with the dedication of the team and their professionalism. Most importantly, the team is professionally qualified and has the technical expertise to guide the accurate and compliant management of the payables process. Thanks to them, we have a non-manual AP function that functions seamlessly and has brought us significant cost savings.
Our customer master data was in complete disarray, slowing down our receivables considerably. Cogneesol assigned us a dedicated resource to help with customer data maintenance and streamline all the other sub-processes of Accounts Receivables. The resource immediately set to task with correcting payment terms, centralizing data maintenance, implementing controls, and conducting regular audits. Soon we were able to do away with more than 80% of customer disputes!
We had a huge pile of outstanding receivables that had blocked huge amounts of cash. We hired Cogneesol to help clean up our account sand support, especially with the receivables. The team charted a collections plan, segregated receivables as per their DSOs, and allocated the collections to their team with set targets. It took the agents under two months to collect close to 90% of our receivables!
