All information was spread across separate databases with no consolidation. Each enterprise of the concern kept its own records, and this data could be consolidated into a single accounting system only manually.
Consignment • Retail • Manufacturing
A Single System for 3,200+ Employees: How We Unified Accounting at Khlibprom Concern
PrJSC Khlibprom Concern produces bread, bakery, and confectionery products, as well as dough-based semi-finished products. It operates a network of bakeries and grain elevators and employs more than 3,200 people. Our team consolidated several of the concern’s legal entities into a single information system that covers the management of contracts, fleet and transport, cash, the consolidated budget, and product cost.
📊 20x
fewer information databases across the concern
⏱ 2–4 days
of an accountant’s work replaced by automatio
🎓 850 users
trained to work in the unified system
Situation Before the Project
The concern included several legal entities and a network of bakeries and grain elevators, each of which kept part of its accounting separately.
Long loading times for forms, reports, and consolidated enterprise data slowed down operational accounting, budget control, and cost calculation. Users lost working time waiting for the system to respond, and data was entered with a delay, which reduced the currency and reliability of the information. Management received operational data later than it needed for timely decisions.
Data on contracts, cash flows, expenses, and production was kept in separate spreadsheets and paper documents. This took considerable labor and led to errors, duplication, and discrepancies between the concern’s enterprises. Data arrived late, and consolidating it for management required additional time for reconciliation and aggregation.
Without unified regulations, standard document forms, or designated responsible persons, identical operations were performed differently at different enterprises of the concern. This caused redundant parallel work, delays in contract and payment approvals, and difficulties with budget execution control and data consolidation.
Objectives and Critical Requirements
The client needed a unified information system that could support the concern’s transition to a new organizational structure, speed up the preparation of management information, and provide end-to-end analytics from consolidated indicators down to the source document.
1. Timely transition to the new organizational and legal structure
The system had to support the transition of the concern and its enterprises to the new structure without interrupting accounting and management. It had to promptly update the legal entity, department, and contract directories, preserve historical data, and correctly transfer balances, liabilities, and budgets to the new entities.
2. Prompt preparation of information
Management and financial information had to be generated quickly and without manual data consolidation. This required automatic consolidation of enterprise data, ready-made report templates, and sufficient system performance.
3. Performance optimization
The system had to deliver acceptable response times when working with forms, generating reports, and consolidating enterprise data, including under concurrent use by many users and growing data volumes.
4. Detailed analytics with drill-down to the source document
The system had to provide consolidated analytics with sequential drill-down from the concern’s summary indicators to the level of an enterprise, a line item, and an individual transaction. From any indicator, users had to be able to drill through to the source document (contract, payment order, invoice, or acceptance certificate) from which the figure was derived.
What Our Team Did and How
Contract Management
We defined and structured a single set of attributes used to describe contracts in the database: contract type and subject, counterparty, concern enterprise, amount, validity period, status, responsible person, and budget line item.
This means all enterprises now enter contracts in the same structure, and the data can be quickly searched, grouped, consolidated, and linked to budgets and payments.
Alongside this, we developed and formally approved standard contract templates for the main types of operations, in order to harmonize terms, reduce legal and financial risks, and shorten preparation and approval time at all enterprises of the concern.
We set up a protected server folder with access control and backup for scanned copies of contracts, and migrated the existing contract database into the automated system along with an approval mechanism for new contracts.
The concern now has an organized and protected contract database with standard forms, a centralized repository of scans, and a working approval mechanism for new contracts.
Fleet and Transport Management
We set up the recording of management information on grain movement and its processing into flour, as well as the planning and optimization of routes for transporting grain, flour, and processing waste. Vehicle movement is recorded in electronic waybills and a trip log linked to consignment notes (TTN).
As a result, the concern now tracks grain movement and has optimized its transportation processes.
Cash Management
We shifted cash flow accounting from retrospective control to a managed budgeting process in which spending is controlled in advance and analyzed transparently.
Control now takes place before payment: the system automatically blocks cash movements for line items that are not in the budget or whose limits have been exceeded, so overspending is prevented rather than detected after the fact.
Budget data is now generated in the system automatically, without manual extraction from the accounting database. Previously, according to the client, the chief accountant spent 2–4 days on this task after each month-end close.
The system also provides analysis of the execution of each budget line item by transaction, responsibility center, enterprise, and period, with comparison of cash flows across line items. Accumulated expenses and plan-to-actual variances are visible without additional calculations.
Transactions are now assigned to line items according to unified rules and directories, which has reduced interpretation errors and technical errors. A unified methodology and procedure for applying inter-company prices have eliminated discrepancies and distortions in actual data.
Budget Consolidation
We brought the budget formation, control, and execution analysis processes, previously run separately with manual consolidation, into a single system. Operational control over the use of financial resources is now enforced by blocking cash movements for line items that are not provided for in the budget or that exceed the established amounts, while the execution analysis of individual budget line items is backed by detailed analytics.
Expense control has moved from retrospective (overspending was detected only after payments had been made) to real-time. Analytics that previously could not match cash flows against line items and responsibility centers now provide a detailed analysis of each line item by transaction, responsibility center, enterprise, and period.
Prompt Production Cost Calculation
We implemented automatic generation of consolidated reports and comparisons, automated the calculation, and established a unified cost accounting methodology.
Information on the availability and movement of material and financial resources now reaches the central information system no later than the day following the reporting day, without duplicate data entry or manual change tracking.
Working with the Client’s Team
The CBPM project team consisted of a curator, a project manager, analysts, and programmers. Collaboration with the client’s team was organized through architecture discussions, technical specifications, demonstrations, and training.
Five waves of training covered 850 users across the concern.
A key success factor was the high caliber of the concern’s management staff. System support and enhancement continue after go-live.
Non-Standard Technical Solutions
Accounting entry aggregation
Data on the movement of material and financial resources from several of the concern’s legal entities is aggregated automatically in the unified system and reaches the central database no later than the day after the reporting day, without manual consolidation from each enterprise’s separate accounting database.
Single-server operation
Instead of separate databases for each enterprise, the concern gained one environment for all its data. This is what delivered the 20-fold reduction in the number of information databases and removed the need for manual data reconciliation between enterprises.
Custom configuration built on a base accounting platform
We built the functionality for managing contracts, cash, and the consolidated budget as an extension of the base accounting platform. This preserved a single accounting environment for the entire concern without scattering functionality across a set of loosely connected tools.
Results
Lower IT support workload and reduced risk of failures
With 20 times fewer information databases, there are fewer systems to maintain and synchronize, and the risk of failures that stemmed from the fragmented infrastructure has been eliminated.
Management decisions based on up-to-date data
Information on the movement of material and financial resources reaches the central system with a lag of no more than one day, so management no longer waits for operational data longer than a timely decision allows.
The chief accountant’s time is freed for analysis rather than data collection
The manual data extraction that previously took 2–4 days after month-end close has been replaced by automatic generation of budget data.
Budget control now takes place before payment
The system automatically blocks cash movements for line items that are not in the budget or whose limits have been exceeded.
Contracts at all enterprises follow the same structure
Every enterprise in the concern maintains contracts in the same format, with a shared protected repository of scans and a single approval mechanism for new contracts.
