Automating Cash Reconciliation for RejaReja
Michael Mutethia
Introduction
RejaReja is a platform that connects neighbourhood merchants to essential goods that they can sell to their customers. This can be done by the merchant through a merchant app or by the help of a sales agent through the agent app.
The Problem
How can we automate cash reconciliation to reduce delays, discrepancies and operational cost
One of the biggest challenges we faced as a business was that as much as digital payments were recommended to our merchants, a huge number of them still preferred to pay via cash. This cash had to be collected by fulfilment agents, remitted to the company and manually reconciled to orders which was a process that resulted in delays, increased operational costs, and financial losses.
Research – What are the challenges that our fulfilment, recon and finance teams are facing?
With the scale the business was growing at, the business team needed us to find a more efficient way of handling reconciliations. Our first goal was to understand the pain points faced by the reconciliation and fulfilment teams. Through interviews led by the product discovery team we were able to learn the following:
Inaccurate reconciliation: With hundreds of orders and cash payments to be reconciled manually, there were instances of incorrect payments being credited to orders or missed payments. This led to discrepancies in our financial records and losses.
Theft: Our fulfilment agents often carried cash during deliveries, which exposed them to risk of theft and robbery.
Delayed deposit of cash: Fulfilment agents sometimes delayed depositing cash to the company's digital wallet, which caused a delay in updating the financial records.
High operational costs: The manual reconciliation process required a dedicated team of agents, which increased operational costs, affecting the profitability of the business.
Quotes from some interviewed users
The Solution – Building a reconciliation module
Building on top of our existing infrastructure to facilitate payment and order reconciliation
It was clear that we needed to leverage on the technology we had to digitize the entire reconciliation process. Through a brainstorming session, and with the considerations around the business needs at that specific moment, we needed to build a solution around the following key areas
Enable fulfilment agents to easily reconcile their cash deposits with orders in the agent app
Enable reconciliation agents to view all orders and their respective payments
Key responsibilities
As the lead designer on this. I was tasked with creating the following
User flow generation
Using a combination of sketching and FigJam I showcased how I envisioned this process working on the agent app as well as internal dashboard. I presented this to the CTO, Head of Product, Engineering Lead and Project Manager to gather some feedback on what would work.
Extremely simplified user flow for the fulfilment agent
Design layouts
On approval of the user flow I quickly created screens of the entire mobile experience on Figma. Due to the time sensitive nature of the project, these designs needed to be high fidelity and through Figma’s comment feature the necessary people got to share their feedback as I designed.
Enable fulfilment agents to easily reconcile their cash deposits with orders in the agent app
Emphasising the total cash payments collected that need reconciliation
Enabling selection of specific orders that need reconciliation
Leveraging on mpesa checkout to easily pay for cash payments deposited to their wallet
Enable reconciliation agents to view all orders and their respective payments
Reconciliations breakdown with relevant states to recon agents
Detail view of specific reconciliation with relevant info around payments and related orders
Release and Results
After internal testing we launched the reconciliation beta to the recon and fulfilment teams with very promising results. Aside from a few bugs, we were able to see the following results:
Reduction in the need for a dedicated reconciliation team, resulting in a reduction in operational costs.
The automated reconciliation process has helped to reduce errors in payment reconciliation by 50%, which has improved the accuracy of financial records and reduced potential losses for the company.
Conclusion and Future Considerations
The first release of this feature was considered a success by the business. There are however some aspects that would need to be improved or solved for specifically around:
How to reduce fulfilment agents’ need to handle a lot of cash
Offering better analytics to recon and finance teams of order payments that could help optimise operations around delivery and route planning
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Posted Jul 19, 2024
I am a product designer currently reimagining the agent onboarding experience at KOKO Networks with the goal of making the process 60% faster.
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