Twelve days. That’s how long a 60-person manufacturer took to close its books every month. The finance team wasn’t slow — they spent most of those twelve days waiting on other people.
I asked the finance manager to log what she was actually waiting for. The results embarrassed everyone, including her.
The 12 days, broken down honestly
Days one to three: chasing shipping to confirm what actually left the dock, because the dispatch notes and the system disagreed on 8 to 12 lines every month. Days four to six: three sales reps who filed expense claims “when they got a minute”.
Days seven to nine: matching purchase invoices to receipts, with roughly 200 invoices a month and no reliable way to tell which ones had a matching delivery. Days ten to twelve: fixing the mess that the first nine days created.
Not one of those twelve days involved analysis. The company had a finance team doing detective work instead of looking at margins.
Three rules that did most of the work
The ERPNext Consulting engagement started with a simple question: who is allowed to change a number, and when? That question produced most of the fixes.
- Nothing leaves the dock without being confirmed in the system the same day. Dispatch owns this, not finance.
- Expense claims get submitted by Friday or they roll to next month. Two reminders, then it rolls. No exceptions, including the sales director.
- Goods received are recorded at the door, so a purchase invoice either matches automatically or lands in a short exception queue.
The exception queue turned out to be the most valuable part. Instead of reviewing 200 invoices, the team reviewed 14. The other 186 cleared themselves, and anything odd stood out immediately.
What four extra days bought them
Close dropped to four days. But the unexpected win was what showed up in the gap: £71,000 a year in duplicate payments and missed supplier credits that had been hiding inside the pile.
The finance manager now spends the second week of every month on margin by product line, not on reconciliation. That’s a different job, and she says it’s the first time in nine years she’s enjoyed it.
Here’s your next step. For one month, keep a log. Every day, write down exactly what you’re waiting for and who owes it to you. The pattern will point at one or two bottlenecks, and those are the only things worth fixing first.