How General Mills Puts Cash on the Table with AP Reviews

Jeff Heinrich, Senior Global Process Specialist – Accounts Payable & Expense Reporting, is a champion of procure-to-pay best practices. General Mills continuously refines SAP to catch duplicate payments then the AP team runs an internal review as a secondary pass. General Mills also relies on apexanalytix to complete a 90-day rolling statement audit and an annual duplicate check analysis to find anything that has fallen through the cracks. 

General Mills’ recoveries are well below the industry average because of good process controls.  But a recovery audit still makes financial sense. The last review returned nearly half a million in duplicate recoveries and $1.75 million in statement recoveries, adding valuable working capital to the business and pinpointing problem areas.

Listen to the interview with Jeff to learn:

• The four-step process to identify duplicate payments and statement credits
• The business case for an objective third-party rolling statement review versus adding headcount for an internal recovery audit
• Common reasons for duplicate and statement recoveries (e.g., no PO, unidentified volume rebates, return credits)
• Expansion of the AP review to other countries and why
• How feedback from the audit is great training material for their AP processing team

Mark Brousseau
President, Brousseau & Associates 

Over the past 26 years, Mark Brousseau has established himself as a thought leader on accounts payable, accounts receivable, payments and document automation.   A popular speaker at industry conferences and on webinars and podcasts, Brousseau advises prominent end-users and solutions and services providers on how to use automation to improve document- and payments-driven business processes.  Brousseau has chaired numerous educational conferences and has served on several industry committees and boards.  He resides in Center City Philadelphia with his wife and three sons.

Jeff Heinrich
Senior Global Process Specialist – Accounts Payable and Expense Reporting, General Mills

Jeff Heinrich is Senior Global Process Specialist – Accounts Payable and Expense Reporting at General Mills. Prior to his current responsibilities, he was in the finance organization, in Treasury-Capital Structure Management, New Product Development, and Supply Chain Strategic Initiatives. His focus is continuous improvement of General Mills procure-to-pay processes, including e-invoicing optimization, increasing the percentage of PO-backed spend, improvements in the invoice approval process, tighter controls around duplicate detection and prevention and identifying and implementing solutions to further automate AP and improve its contribution to the bottom line of the company. Jeff is a graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and earned his MBA from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

Phil Beane
Senior Vice President, Global Field Operations, apexanalytix

As senior vice president of global field operations, Phil Beane leads our commercial and retail audit teams and international operations. His focus on customer satisfaction and value creation has helped to fuel a period of double-digit growth.

Phil previously was responsible for leading the apexanalytix audit and software implementation support teams in the Americas. Prior to joining the company, he worked with GMAC Insurance, Questcon Technologies and BCE Emergis, where he specialized in quality assurance consulting and management.

Phil graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a degree in information systems. He also served in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division as a communications specialist.