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Faster, more confident
month-end close
How Serra Toyota of Decatur reduced manual work, surfaced exceptions sooner, and created more capacity in the accounting office.
The sales department, the service department, there’s all this technology, all these resources for them. And the back office is often overlooked and forgotten.
Ashley Mansfield
Controller, Serra Toyota of Decatur
Stepping into a 25-year-old process
After twelve years at the dealership, Ashley Mansfield stepped into a controller role previously held for 25 years. She inherited an accounting process built around extensive manual entry, checking, and reconciliation across dealership operations.
- Manual data entry from factory reports
- Limited reporting capabilities in the DMS
- Heavy reliance on manual checking and reconciliation
- Small data-entry errors that could require hours of investigation
A constant tradeoff: speed vs. accuracy
The calendar made those issues expensive. Factory reports from both manufacturers were released on the 1st of the month, the submission deadline landed on the 10th, and the internal goal was a close within 3–4 business days — so every month began as a race, with speed and accuracy pulling against each other.
Our factory reports don’t come out until the first of the month, so you can’t get a head start — you’re immediately working against the clock. You’d spend hours trying to figure out why something didn’t balance… and then realize it was just a small manual error.
Ashley Mansfield Controller, Serra Toyota of Decatur
Financial automation for the repeatable work behind the close
Veramatic handles the reliable, repeatable work between source data and the DMS, so Ashley’s team can put its attention on the exceptions that actually require human judgment.
- Processes and standardizes manufacturer reports
- Applies the dealership’s established accounting process and coding
- Cross-checks activity and surfaces anything that needs human review
- Produces clean, ready-to-post journal entries for the DMS
Report data that once had to be keyed and checked line by line can now be processed in seconds. Veramatic handles the repeatable reconciliation work and surfaces the exceptions, so Ashley’s team knows where its attention is actually needed.
760 lines reconciled. One line that needs a human.
Illustrative representation of exception-based review.
| Warranty claims | 214 lines | Tied out |
| Holdback | 96 lines | Tied out |
| Incentives | 148 lines | Tied out |
| Tag and title · control 40811 | 1 line | Needs judgment |
| Bank activity | 302 lines | Tied out |
Anything we need to actually look into, we know is something worth our time to look into.
Ashley Mansfield Controller, Serra Toyota of Decatur
Impact at a glance
~15 hrs/mo
Manual entry eliminated
2× faster
Month-end close
Day 3
Books closed, every month
The close got faster and lighter. Eliminating repetitive manual entry cut hours of keying each month and reduced the amount of time spent hunting discrepancies.
The bigger return was capacity. When Ashley’s team later lost someone, the reduction in repetitive work gave them enough room to absorb it without rehiring. Time that had been consumed by processing and checking could go back toward the work that actually required accounting expertise.
With less rekeying and repetitive checking, there were fewer opportunities for manual data-entry errors and less time spent troubleshooting. Exceptions surfaced sooner, while Ashley’s team still owned the judgment about what should happen next.
We were able to shift when we lost somebody and didn’t have to rehire.
Ashley Mansfield Controller, Serra Toyota of Decatur
What made the difference
- Automates reliable, repeatable accounting work
- Surfaces exceptions for human judgment
- Returns capacity to the accounting team
Time saved is where the value starts, not where it ends. Freeing the accounting team from repeatable work gives the dealership back capacity it already had, but couldn’t fully use.
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