"Monarch has helped us tremendously at Paramount Citrus. We are saving paper and printing costs, since Monarch makes our reports more valuable as report files than as printed stacks of paper."

 

Paramount Citrus is California's largest grower and packer of oranges, lemons and other citrus fruit. The company sells its fruits through Sunkist, the citrus growers' cooperative system whose name is synonymous with high-quality fruit. Reconciling citrus sales and receivables recorded by Sunkist's AS400 system with Paramount Citrus' internal accounting system is key to helping ensure Paramount Citrus' business success. This important task has recently become much easier: Paramount Citrus now uses Monarch to easily transform its own internal reports and AS400-based reports from Sunkist into fresh-squeezed data.

THE CHALLENGE: RECONCILE, ANALYZE "POOLS" OF REPORT DATA FOR EACH "POOL" OF CITRUS FRUIT

"We receive many reports produced by Sunkist's AS400 system," says Bobby Thomas, Manager of Grower Accounting for Paramount Citrus. "These reports often provide data for each "pool" of citrus fruits. A citrus "pool" refers to fruit received by Sunkist from us, over a certain period of time; usually a few days. Sunkist then produces reports for sales by citrus pool, by size and grade of fruit, as well as other reports, such as outstanding payments due. We can download these reports ("spool files") from Sunkist and print them locally. These reports are long – each report may contain 200 or more pages of data."

Printing these reports was just the first step of some intricate accounting work for Paramount Citrus. "We must reconcile the sales and receivables data from the Sunkist reports with reports from our own internal accounting system," Bobby says. "For example, the pricing for some orders may have been revised, but for different reasons, these revisions may not appear later on the report. Matching such differences between Sunkist's reports and our own reports used to be very time consuming. Finding the right order within the right citrus pool causing a reconciliation difference used to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Finally, we must also match up Sunkist's sales per citrus pool with cost data from our internal accounting system, for profitability and other analysis."

Making the accounting process even more complex is the fact that all of Paramount Citrus' reports are run frequently each month. "We typically pool together our harvested citrus for sale through Sunkist about eight times per month," Bobby says. "That's a lot of paper to print, and a lot of time necessary to flip through many thick reports to find and reconcile differences, or manually key needed data into spreadsheets."

"Fortunately, we are now using Monarch to extract data from our Sunkist reports and internal accounting reports," Bobby adds. "I can't say enough how Monarch has transformed what used to be a complicated reconciliation and analytical process into a piece of cake!"

THE SOLUTION: MONARCH HARVESTS FRESH DATA FROM REPORTS, WITHOUT THE PAPER, AND WITHOUT PROGRAMMING

"Thanks to Monarch, we are no longer printing our Sunkist and internal reports," Bobby says. "We can open and view the report files on a PC using Monarch. This alone has resulted in major cost savings in paper and printing-related expenses. Monarch also lets us search reports for specific data with Monarch's "Find" feature, which has also provided us great benefits."

"But the real benefit and value of Monarch lies in how it can easily harvest the data out of our report files, and present that data in a table format. I build a Monarch model template once for each report, and use it to extract and analyze report data again and again."

"Working with Monarch is very simple; there's no programming and no need for help from the IT department. Thanks to Monarch, I'm not working with paper anymore; I'm working with the data that used to be buried in the reports."

"I use Monarch to extract the data from Sunkist and internal sales reports, and then reconcile the data from each report to identify differences per citrus pool," Bobby says. "I can also analyze sales data from Sunkist with cost data from our internal system, by citrus pool, quickly and easily."

"I also use Monarch to extract data from accounts receivable reports," says Bobby. "Using Monarch, I can extract the data from Sunkist's outstanding payments due reports and reconcile it with our internal accounts receivable reports. This enables me to identify Receivable problems much more quickly, to help realize collection that much faster."

Monarch offers a wide variety of data analysis and export options as well. "I can sort and filter report data, define additional calculated fields of data, summarize and graph report data, and export my data anytime to Excel and other applications," Bobby adds. "Monarch not only lets you extract data from your reports, it's a powerful data analysis system as well."

TURN YOUR REPORTS INTO FRESH­SQUEEZED DATA WITH MONARCH!

Paramount Citrus is now working smarter with Monarch. "Monarch has helped us tremendously at Paramount Citrus," Bobby concludes. "We are saving paper and printing costs, since Monarch makes our reports more valuable as report files than as printed stacks of paper. Plus, we're saving time: reconciliation and analytical work that used to take four, five or six hours is now done in ten minutes with Monarch! That translates to improved business management, with faster resolution of any errors or problems than ever before."

"My advice to other organizations is to start thinking of your reports as mini-databases, not just as stacks of paper," Bobby adds. "Monarch is the key to transforming what used to be just another thick report into a gold mine of data."

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