Kuipers Group is a diversified agricultural business, operating across four divisions, including a broiler division, commercial egg laying, conglomerates, and a feed milling division for its operations. The group manages over 22 operational legal entities, which have different financial year-ends, making financial reporting complex and time-consuming.
The Challenge
Historically, the group relied on a combination of Pastel Partner, Pastel Evolution, Accpac and Excel spreadsheets for financial management and reporting. Monthly reporting, budgeting, and consolidation required extensive manual input, often resulting in inconsistent data and delays. This approach resulted in fragmented data, inefficiencies, and prolonged reporting cycles.
The group’s internal transactions, such as sales of chicks, eggs, feed, and rent, also required a streamlined system for tracking and consolidation purposes. This made it difficult to prepare consolidated financial statements, often taking up to three months to finalise. Preparing consolidated financial statements further required importing trial balances into Excel and linking and mapping accounts manually, taking days of work each month.
The Solution
After evaluating several alternatives, Finnivo was selected as the ideal financial software solution for the Kuipers Group. Finnivo streamlined intergroup transactions, standardised reporting across 22 legal entities and provided real-time financial data, enabling better decision-making. The group now enjoys greater efficiency and accuracy in its financial processes, making Finnivo an indispensable tool.
“Finnivo is the only system that could accommodate our complex reporting structure and extensive intergroup transactions. Our monthly financial reporting, which previously required manual intervention can now be generated automatically after month end was finalised with the click of a button,” says Ernest Pachonick, Group Financial Director at Kuipers.
“Finnivo is the only system that could accommodate our complex reporting structure and extensive intergroup transactions.”
Implementation
The implementation, which needed to cater for various complexities, including different year-ends and specific tax computations, was successfully completed through effective collaboration between the Finnivo team and Kuipers Group’s project leaders. Employees across the group quickly adapted to the new system, impressed by Finnivo’s user-friendly interface and powerful reporting capabilities. External auditors, too, were able to access the system and drill down to specific transactions for testing, significantly improving audit efficiency.
According to Pachonick, one of the standout moments occurred when Kuipers Group faced a forensic audit for an insurance claim regarding a fire claim at one of the sites in the Group. Finnivo enabled us to compile detailed financial information and data from 2012 to 2022 in just three months—a process that would usually take years. “The forensic auditors were blown away by the speed, detail and accuracy in providing and verifying information against audited financial statements” adds Pachonick.
Kuipers Group plans to further leverage Finnivo’s capabilities by automating the consolidation process entirely, eliminating the need for manual data entry which would make the process even more efficient.
Would you recommend Finnivo?
“Absolutely! I’ve been promoting Finnivo to everyone I meet—it’s that good. Working smarter, not harder, is the long-term benefit we’ve gained from this partnership” says Pachonick.