Cambridgeshire, UK based warehouse and distribution specialist Brett’s Transport has invested in new cutting-edge cloud accounting software to improve visibility and efficiency across operations and reduce its reporting admin, a move which will save approximately one week of manual data entry every month.

Cloud accounting software, bluQube, will integrate with Brett’s Transport’s other back-office systems to allow greater visibility across the organisation and enable the development of a flash reporting function to compare weekly performance against KPIs.

Prior to the investment in bluQube, Brett’s Transport was using a basic account system that managed basic invoice processes and operated in silos to other systems within the business. The dated system was time intensive and required staff to manually key in data, match invoices and chase payments.

In its place, the finance team was looking for an easy-to-use finance system that would accommodate its broader reporting requirements across activity both in and outside of the finance system – a process that was previously being done manually on spreadsheets.

bluQube will handle and automate more of Brett’s Transport’s accounting processes. The interoperable system allows the team to bring sales ledger data across from its WMS to bring invoices into bluQube to automatically create customer statements and automate the payment chasing. It then reconciles what’s been paid and received and posts it accordingly – another process that was managed outside of its previous system spreadsheets.

In addition, the team at bluQube is developing a solution to enable Brett’s Transport to pull wider business information into the software application so it can produce flash reports across current performance and make comparisons to the business’ KPIs. This data extraction, analysis and reporting automation will save Brett’s Transport approximately one week per month in the time it was previously taking for a member of staff to manually collate the data and write the reports.

James Cook, finance director at Brett’s Transport, commented: “bluQube ticks all the boxes in the finance and accounting processes we need it to handle, and much more. The ability to report on information not currently held in the finance system was a key decision factor for us, but ultimately it was the user-friendliness of the system and the team at bluQube that was the deal breaker in our decision to progress. We liked bluQube’s people-first approach and see great synergy between the two companies.

“We already have confidence in the software to let it take on many of our crucial finance and reporting processes and make key decisions. Once bluQube is implemented and up and running we look forward to exploring some more of its features and functionality, including OCR and automated workflows on the purchase ledger for incoming invoices. It’s going to be transformational for our team and the wider business.”

Nicky Wilkins, head of customer engagement at bluQube, commented: “We look forward to working with Brett’s Transport to implement the software and see the efficiencies and time savings it achieves, as well as the impact of greater data visibility and strategic insight. On top of bluQube’s interoperability and wide-ranging capabilities, the people aspect and maintaining strong business relationships is our key differentiator and it’s encouraging to have this recognised by James and the team.”