100% automated reconciliation of more than 14 companies and 500 account groups
About Nutrien
The Nutrien is a Canadian fertilizer company based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It is the largest producer of potash and the third largest producer of nitrogen fertilizers in the world. It has more than 2,000 retail points in North America, South America and Australia, with more than 23,500 employees.
Since entering Brazil in 2018, Nutrien has expanded significantly through the acquisition of new companies. In this scenario, the multinational began to encounter challenges in the financial management of these retail and industrial acquisitions, each with different systems, charts of accounts and accounting routines.
Context
In this context, Nutrien's main goal was to have more organized processes and stronger governance in financial management. This required implementing policies to strengthen control and mitigate the risks associated with managing so many companies.
One of the main objectives associated with this was to consolidate information from accounting routines and standardize all reported data. Considering that Nutrien uses a universal consolidation system and adapts it to each company's routine, you can imagine the size of the challenge.
To do this, they understood that they could rely on the Dattos platform, which was already used within the company, to adapt it and be able to meet other fronts and needs.
The solution
Faced with a pressing need to improve accounting reconciliation routines for more agile and assertive processes, standardizing information before global reporting, and addressing risks associated with manual entries, Nutrien turned to the Dattos team to clearly define the possible paths forward.
Thus, an analysis was conducted to understand what needed to be adapted in the tool to make it effective in this new reality. Today, Dattos is used by Nutrien in the post-closing accounting reconciliation stage and also as a starting point for other processes.
Multiple acquired companies, across retail and industry sectors, each with different systems, charts of accounts, and accounting routines for information consolidation.
Creating a "doing" culture to ensure the tool is used to its full potential, rather than just uploading data into the system without a next step.
With fewer than 40% of accounts reconciled, the company lacked the data reliability needed for sound decision-making and reporting to Nutrien Global with appropriate governance
Use cases at Nutrien
Post-closing accounting reconciliation
Balance sheet accounts report (assets, liabilities and equity)
Account-by-account analysis based on data provided by the platform
End-to-end approval workflow (preparation, review and approval) for general ledger accounts
"Today, I finish the closing and start the reconciliation cycle, which lasts an average of two weeks. Once this phase is over, my team looks into each company within each group using the information provided by Dattos, and works with the accountants to understand and resolve what is happening in those accounts. Then, it moves to the next cycle (closing) to see if what was needed was done and how it can be improved for the following cycle."
Leandro Mariotto
Controllership Coordinator at Nutrien
Want to know how to achieve Nutrien's results with our technology?
"The tool has helped tremendously, the partnership was well-built, and we have seen great results. Dattos' support works very well—whenever we have a request, the feedback is very fast. We have a limited team size, and sometimes a one or two-day delay in information makes a big difference within the overall cycle. Dattos responds quickly and prevents that loss of time between cycles and in the process as a whole, which is why Dattos is so important to Nutrien."