{"id":6939,"date":"2017-01-25T03:28:08","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T03:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.trintech.com\/case-study\/panera-bread-company\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T15:08:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T15:08:42","slug":"panera-bread-company","status":"publish","type":"case-study","link":"https:\/\/www.trintech.com\/case-study\/panera-bread-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Panera Bread Company Rises Above Spreadsheets to Increase Visibility and Control"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Panera Bread Company Rises Above Spreadsheets to Increase Visibility and Control<\/h1>\n

Case Study<\/p>\n <\/div>\n

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Panera Bread Company\u2019s Finance Department had done everything that it possibly could in-house. The company was reconciling 650 cash depository accounts, credit cards and general ledger accounts \u2013 all in Excel. But with the company\u2019s tremendous growth, Finance found itself needing an automated solution that could help it keep up with the pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After extracting credit card transactions from Oracle, one person spent approximately three weeks every month manually completing the required reconciliations. At the same time, the company had four employees who reconciled cash and resolved any exceptions each month. Additionally, another twenty-five employees were required to reconcile the business\u2019s general ledger accounts. Overall, the process lacked any sort of automated workflow or business analytics. \u201cIt was a clumsy process,\u201d said Mark Wooldridge, Chief Accounting Officer at Panera. \u201cAs preparers handed off their reconciliations to reviewers, and as the business prepared reconciliations for auditors, we were creating binders and binders of hard copies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No other solution offered such a robust connection point between the high-volume cash and credit reconciliations and the balance sheet certification processes.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/blockquote>\n\n

\n Mark Wooldridge<\/span>\n \n Chief Accounting Officer<\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n\n <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
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Business Drivers to Automate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Panera didn\u2019t just want a more scalable system. It wanted a more efficient and transparent operation. Any solution it selected would need to integrate seamlessly with Panera\u2019s Oracle ERP system, and had to provide the trending and reporting data that senior managers required to support other internal business initiatives, like online ordering.Consistency of the company\u2019s business process across departments and accounts was critical, ensuring top-down enforcement of business controls and reducing manual errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u201cReconNET spoke our language when it came to retail,\u201d said Kelley Basta, Panera\u2019s VP of Financial Solutions. \u201cTrintech had already helped many retail clients navigate the same path we were on, particularly the techniques employed to reconcile over\/shorts.\u201d Once a decision was made to implement ReconNET, it made perfect sense to also utilize Trintech\u2019s Cadency Certification solution for Panera\u2019s balance sheet accounting. \u201cIntegration with Oracle and the ReconNET solution was an important factor in our decision,\u201d said Wooldridge.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Solution in Action<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

During implementation of the two solutions, Trintech staff worked with Panera Bread Company\u2019s finance employees to understand its unique requirements for automation. For example, the credit card process, in particular, required Trintech to understand Panera\u2019s unique business rules and to help translate those needs to First Data, which provided the company\u2019s data feed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trintech\u2019s ReconNET and Cadency Certification solutions provide Panera Bread Company with detailed reporting, an automated workflow that enforces top-down consistency across all processes and the ability to identify issues with cash and credit card reconciliations in a matter of days, rather than weeks. Its staff now has time to reconcile more complicated accounts, adding 15 feeds into ReconNET, including: Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Investment Accounts, Caf\u00e9 Accounts, Concentration Accounts, and more. It has also given them the manpower to support an important online ordering initiative, allowing ReconNET to import credit card transactions individually rather than on a batch basis, so that a specific transaction can be identified and investigated in real time.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Read the Full Case Study<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Discover key insights and actionable strategies by downloading our full case study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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See Trintech in Action<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Seeing is believing. Discover why Trintech is the real leader in financial close automation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Book a Demo<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Panera Bread Company\u2019s Finance Department had done everything that it possibly could in-house. The company was reconciling 650 cash depository accounts, credit cards and general ledger accounts \u2013 all in Excel. But with the company\u2019s tremendous growth, Finance found itself needing an automated solution that could help it keep up with the pace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":33344,"template":"","topic":[66,71],"product":[84,80],"class_list":["post-6939","case-study","type-case-study","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-controls-compliance","topic-improve-visibility","product-reconnet","product-targeted-tools"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":6939},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trintech.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/case-study\/6939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trintech.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/case-study"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trintech.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/case-study"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.trintech.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/case-study\/6939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49213,"href":"https:\/\/www.trintech.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/case-study\/6939\/revisions\/49213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trintech.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trintech.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trintech.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=6939"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trintech.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=6939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}