Industry characteristics
- Revenue comes mainly from exports, involving customs declarations, bills of lading, packing lists and more;
- Refund filings and receipt of foreign currency run on different clocks, creating long-outstanding balances;
- FX settlement introduces exchange-rate movements that are easily mis-aggregated.
Key exposures
- Documentation that does not match the books, with gaps discovered only at refund-filing time;
- Inconsistent revenue recognition points, so the same year is treated differently along the way;
- Cross-border receipt routes involving several entities, with no clear link between funds and transactions.
How we work
- Map the business flow first: from order, customs clearance and collection to refund, setting out the document requirements at each step;
- Unify revenue recognition and FX treatment into written rules;
- Pre-review the file before each refund filing to cut back-and-forth corrections;
- Bring it into management accounting so gross margin and FX results are reviewed monthly.