Carling Technologies: JD Edwards Inventory Reconciliation

About the Client

Founder Arthur Carling established the company in 1920 and, as a skilled toolmaker, first limited his work to tool and dies and special machinery. He quickly recognized the vast opportunity in the emerging electrical industry, however, and within a few years began to direct Carling Tool & Machine’s expansion into this area. Today, the company now ranks among the world’s largest privately-owned manufacturers of hydraulic magnetic circuit breakers, thermal circuit breakers, electrical switches and assemblies, power distribution centers, digital switching systems, and electronic controls. Globally, there are over 2,000 employees working for Carling, providing solutions to customers’ application needs with innovation, value, and world-class service for both standard and custom products. Carling’s breadth and depth of standard product offerings gives customers literally millions of configuration choices to meet the demands of its strategic markets.

Challenges the Client Faced

Each month Carling Technologies was spending a significant amount of time as well as manual effort researching and reconciling variances between their Inventory and the general ledger in JD Edwards, as well as addressing these issues with the auditors at year-end. These variances were the result of AAI mapping problems, cardex discrepancies, setup problems as well as procedural, timing, and third-party software issues. While at a Quest User Conference, they discovered RapidReconciler and were immediately impressed with its functionality. The product would allow them to easily identify the root cause of reconciling issues and prevent many of them from occurring in the future. RapidReconciler would also decrease the time and effort required to identify and correct outstanding reconciling items. Based on their analysis, they decided it was the perfect solution to address Carling’s inventory issues and decided to purchase it.

GSI's Solution

Linda Ferguson, the Controller at Carling, was most impressed with the results achieved once the solution was installed at Carling. “We now use RapidReconciler on a daily basis to ensure inventory remains in balance with the general ledger in JD Edwards. We can immediately identify and easily resolve variances daily resulting from various cardex discrepancies, batch postings problems, work orders issues, and other reconciling items.” Linda also discussed the ability of the product to identify the root cause of issues so they could be prevented in the future. “RapidReconciler identified AAI, warranty and other setup issues that were causing us to be out of balance. We were able to correct these setup issues and prevent the discrepancies from occurring in the future. It also identified a receiving issue caused by a third-party software tool. Carling was able quickly address and correct this issue with the tool provider. RapidReconciler is also an invaluable tool during the audit process providing a complete audit reconciliation report and audit trail for each reconciling item. We can run it at any time for any period ending date.”