The same millions counted twice. Vendor advances and payables, reconciled and cut 80–90%.
Success Story · Working Capital · E-commerce · International sourcing
A mid-sized e-commerce company sourcing inventory from international suppliers paid for stock in multiple tranches, with final invoice values moving on foreign exchange, variable shipping, and other adjustments. Over time the books stopped reflecting reality: millions of dollars appeared at once as vendor advances and as accounts payable, and vendor balances had never been reconciled against supplier statements. EasePro reconciled every vendor line by line, rebuilt inventory costing to SKU level, and cut both payables and advances by 80–90% — then handed over a standardised workflow so the internal team could keep it that way.
The ChallengePaying in tranches, in a currency that moved, with nothing reconciled behind it.
The procurement model was the root of it. Inventory came from international suppliers, payment went out in several tranches per order, and the final invoice value frequently landed somewhere other than expected — moved by foreign exchange, variable shipping cost, and other adjustments. Nothing about that is unusual; what made it a problem was that the books were never reconciled back to the suppliers' own records.
- The same money counted on both sides of the balance sheet. Millions of dollars were reflected simultaneously as vendor advances and as accounts payable. Payments made against an order sat as advances; the invoices for those same orders sat as payables. Neither was wrong in isolation, and together they overstated both what the business had paid out and what it still owed.
- No reconciliation against supplier statements. Vendor balances in the ledger had never been matched to the balances the suppliers themselves were reporting. Without that check there was no mechanism by which the duplication could ever surface on its own.
- Inventory costing not tracked at SKU level. Landed cost was not being allocated down to individual SKUs, so stock could not be valued accurately and there was no reliable per-SKU view of what inventory had actually cost to bring in.
- The real working capital position was unknowable. With payables overstated, advances overstated, and inventory valued on incomplete costing, the figures that determine working capital were all unreliable at the same time. The business could not say what it genuinely owed or what its stock was worth.
What We DidReconcile every vendor, rebuild the costing, then hand over the workflow.
This was a clean-up with a system at the end of it. Reconciling the history without fixing the process would have left the same duplication to rebuild itself within a year, so the engagement covered both.
- Vendor-level reconciliation, transaction by transaction. Every vendor was worked through individually — advances, invoices, and payments matched against each other and against the supplier's own statement, so each order's tranches resolved to a single, correct position.
- Mismatched entries offset. Where an advance and a payable represented the same underlying money, the entries were offset rather than left standing on both sides. This is what produced the 80–90% reduction in both balances.
- Inventory costing reconstructed to SKU level. Purchase data was rebuilt and costs allocated accurately across SKUs, giving the business proper inventory valuation and a per-SKU view of landed cost it had not had before.
- A standardised workflow, handed over. The reconciliation process was streamlined using G-Accon and documented as a repeatable workflow, so the internal team runs the ongoing reconciliation themselves rather than depending on a periodic clean-up.
The OutcomeA balance sheet that shows what is actually owed.
Offsetting the mismatched entries reduced both accounts payable and vendor advances by nearly 80–90%. The balance sheet stopped carrying the same money twice, which gave the business a far clearer picture of its actual liabilities and its real working capital position. SKU-level costing made inventory valuation dependable for the first time. Because the reconciliation was handed over as a standardised workflow rather than delivered as a one-off clean-up, the internal team now maintains it going forward.
Details are anonymised for client confidentiality. The engagement structure, methodology, and outcomes are unchanged from the actual engagement; no figures are claimed that were not recorded.