UMS Reduced Manual Customer Clearing and Improved Debtors Control in SAP

Unitrade Management Services (UMS)

Unitrade Management Services is a South African voluntary trading organisation supporting independent wholesale and retail traders across Southern Africa. Established in 2000, UMS operates across several trading formats, including Powertrade, Food Town, Best Buy and Price Rite, bringing together buying power, operational support and business services for its member network.

Within this environment, the UMS Debtors Team manages customer remittances, deductions, claims and payment allocations across a high-volume member base. As remittance volumes increased, the team needed a faster and more accurate way to manage customer clearing inside SAP, reduce manual allocation work and improve debtors control.

Manual Processes Limiting Accuracy

Before implementing BEST, UMS processed customer remittances manually. Remittances had to be printed, checked line by line and matched against open invoices in SAP. Staff also had to raise credits individually, making the process repetitive, time-consuming and vulnerable to errors.

The challenge became more complex when customers had multiple invoices or claims for the same value. If a customer had ten invoices for the same amount but only paid nine, the team had to manually check which invoices should be cleared and which should remain open.

This placed significant pressure on the Debtors Team during month-end. Staff could spend until the 10th or 11th of the month reconciling member remittances, leaving less time to investigate claims, follow up queries and manage ageing balances.

Why UMS Chose BEST

UMS went live with the BEST Customer Clearing module at the start of August 2024, extending its existing use of BEST solutions inside SAP.

The team had already used BEST Vendor Recons and BEST Statement Portal to support creditor statement processing. For customer clearing, UMS needed a solution that could work with its existing OCR capability and portal interface while improving payment allocation inside SAP.

BEST gave UMS the flexibility to keep its existing process where needed, while introducing automated matching, clearing and control within SAP.

Automation Within SAP

With BEST Customer Clearing, UMS introduced a more structured customer remittance process. Members receive a structured Excel remittance containing open items, claims and deduction columns, then return it showing what they are paying.

UMS’s in-house OCR process reads the remittance, generates the relevant claim lines and prepares the file for upload into BEST Customer Clearing. The module then supports automated matching and clearing inside SAP, reducing the need for manual checks and line-by-line processing.

Because UMS did not use IDocs and already had a direct portal interface, the implementation was shaped around an Excel upload process that worked with the company’s existing environment.

Results and Impact

BEST’s Customer Clearing module helped UMS reduce manual customer clearing, improve allocation accuracy and create a faster, more controlled month-end process.

Key results include:

• Month-end remittance clearing now completed by the 2nd of the month, instead of the 10th or 11th
• Large member remittances reduced from a full day of processing to around 15 minutes
• 189,035 remittance lines processed through BEST Customer Clearing by March 2026
• 181,086 lines cleared, representing a 99.6% clearing rate
• R4.875 billion in remittances processed across 2024 and 2025
• 10 to 12 days freed up each month for claims, queries and debtor ageing work
• 40% reduction in debtor ageing balance

With less manual clearing and fewer allocation issues, the UMS Debtors Team can now manage growing remittance volumes without increasing headcount, while maintaining stronger control inside SAP.