Luxury Retail

Automating Accounts Payable Invoice Processing in Jesta for a Premier Canadian Luxury Menswear Retailer

The IDW Reads Accounts Payable Emails, Extracts Invoice Data, Matches Purchase Orders, Allocates Codes and Taxes, and Posts Entries into Jesta Across Retail, Expense, and Made-to-Measure categories

Client Overview

A leading Canadian luxury menswear retailer known for premium brands, personalized service and a longstanding reputation of quality. The company sought to modernize high-volume finance processes while continuing to work within its existing current ERP system.

The Challenge

High-volume vendorsto manage results in error prone processing

High daily invoice volumesPeak in one day, straining manual capacity

Tens of thousands invoicesProcessed annually

Siloed SystemsInvoice details spread across ERP, email & spreadsheets

High-Volume, Manual Entry Process

Every invoice requires repetitive manual entries into Jesta Vision, a retail ERP system. The manual sequence includes reading the vendor email, downloading the document, keying the details into Jesta, and checking the figures balanced before posting. The finance team processed thousands of invoices from high-volume vendors through repetitive manual activities including reading emails, downloading invoices, validating purchase orders, and entering transactions into Jesta. As invoice volumes grew, the process became increasingly difficult to scale consistently.

Three Invoices, Three Different Workflows

Retail invoices were three-way matched line by line against purchase orders and goods-received records, with PO numbers in vendor PDFs that often carried extra characters and digits. Expense invoices arrived with no purchase order at all, requiring staff to split costs across stores and assign the right budget codes and taxes by hand. Made-to-measure invoices followed their own path again, each one tracked and keyed separately. Each workflow followed different business rules and validation requirements.

Business Impact

The manual process consumed significant finance capacity performing high-volume repeatable work that limited time available for higher-value activities. The company wanted AI to augment the finance team while keeping people focused on exceptions and decision making.

The IDW Solution

Intelligent automation across the entire workflow

1 Retail Invoice Three-Way Matching and Posting

The IDW bulk downloads new vendor invoices from Outlook, pulls the daily Goods Received Not Invoiced report from Jesta, and stores the information in its internal database. It automatically matches invoice PO numbers against the Goods received reports and creates matched invoice transactions into Jesta. It enters the vendor, invoice, and amount details, and audits the purchase order line by line against the PDF, checking style numbers, colours, quantities, and prices. If a shipment comes in short, it adjusts the quantities to the invoice and if the vendor’s price is overcharging, the IDW escalates. The IDW operates directly within the existing Jesta environment without requiring changes to existing finance systems or processes. The IDW also handles separate processes for consignment vendors and marketplace invoices from portals like Convictional.

2 Expense and Made-to-Measure Invoice Processing

For expense invoices that arrive without a purchase order, the IDW reads each bill to identify store locations and cost types, splits the total across the right stores, and assigns the correct budget codes and regional taxes before posting it into Jesta once it balances to zero. For made-to-measure invoices, it extracts the custom-tailor bills from Outlook, updates a weekly tracking sheet for each vendor, calculates the subtotal before tax, and posts that amount into Jesta under the vendor's designated code. Both run end to end without manual entry, extending the automation across every invoice type the finance team handles.

3 Exception Handling and Daily Control

When something does not reconcile, the IDW stops rather than guessing. If a vendor's price is higher than the purchase order, Jesta blocks the entry, and the IDW halts, logs the reason in its backend database, and emails the finance team an exception report with the specific invoice and a clear explanation attached. The same applies to unfamiliar expense types, missing store codes, or any math mismatch on a made-to-measure invoice, each one is parked and escalated for review. This keeps every posted entry fully balanced and auditable., This allows the finance team to focus on exceptions while routine processing is completed automatically.

Visual Process Breakdown

Smart Validation Logic

Duplicate Detection

Checks downloaded files against existing records by file name, invoice number, and vendor. Duplicates are removed before upload to prevent double-processing.

Field Extraction

Extracts key data from each invoice: vendor name, property code, invoice number, invoice date, amount, and expense type. Missing fields are flagged for staff review.

Good Receipt Matching

Runs the daily Goods receipt report and matches invoices to the correct receipts, reading PO numbers accurately even when vendor PDFs contain extra characters or digits.

GL Distribution Check

Allocates GL codes by internal rules and confirms the GL distribution matches the invoice total before posting. Mismatches are escalated for review.

Exception & Claims Handling

Flags credit notes, chargeback claims (negative amounts), and discrepancies, routing them to finance for review.

Systems & Integrations

Business Outcomes

97%accuracy

Tens of thousandsInvoices processed to date

High-volumeDaily processing

Want to learn about more IDW applications across retail finance processes?

Applicable to luxury retailers, specialty retailers, apparel and footwear companies, department stores, and multi-location retailers, and any other organizations looking to automate high-volume finance processes while continuing to work within existing ERP systems particularly Jesta Vision..

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