Retail Reconciliation Reinvented: Marks & Spencer’s Journey to Scalable, Store-Level Automation

Business Drivers to Automate

With the launch of expanded payment options—including credit cards like Visa, MasterCard, JCB, and American Express—Marks & Spencer (M&S) faced a surge in reconciliation complexity. The UK-based retailer, with operations across 62 countries, over 1,500 locations and 66,000 employees, aimed to automate its financial reconciliation processes, reduce manual input, accelerate resolution of mismatches, and enable store-level transparency across all its global locations.

Challenges:

• Highly manual reconciliation processes using outdated systems
• Increased transaction volume from acceptance of multiple new credit and debit cards
• Risk of financial losses due to reconciliation delays or errors

The real advantage [Trintech] brought was its knowledge base. It was clear from the start that [Trintech] had an in-depth understanding of the reconciliation process for retailing…”

Solution In Action

M&S selected Trintech to replace its aging bespoke reconciliation systems and numerous Excel and Access-based tools. The new system now handles over 20,000 weekly reconciling entries from five data feeds, matching sales and refunds per card type with incoming bank statements.

“The real advantage [Trintech] brought was its knowledge base. It was clear from the start that [Trintech] had an in-depth understanding of the reconciliation process for retailing…We went in with the feeling that they understood our reconciliation needs and came out with a completely different view on our approach,” said Patrick Bishop, M&S’s user manager for business reconciliations.

The implementation allowed the company to:

• Automate data imports and match transactions
• Shift focus from reconciliation to investigation
• Detect and isolate discrepancies faster by reconciling at the store level
• Scale with future payment types and increased data volume

Reconciliation Transformation from Region to Store Level

During consultations, Trintech was instrumental in helping the team determine the best approach concerning the level of reconciliation. This resulted in the decision to reconcile by store rather than by regions within the company. Bishop told us, “In this way any discrepancies can be identified and linked quickly to a particular store or bank. This cuts down the amount of time spent tracking the source of errors…leading to a quicker resolution of queries.”

We are more in control of the information and payments from the bank. Timely reporting enables checking of banks credits, which means late credits are acted upon and we don’t lose out on interest. These factors have translated into significant cost-savings for M&S.”

Return on Investment

“Before [Trintech], we sometimes had difficulty getting successful
downloads of banking information for reconciliation. We have reduced
the amount of manual data input now because the system accepts a
wide range of formats and feeds automatically,” said Bishop, “We have
already found the software’s scalability indispensable.”

A custom integration with American Express’ EPA (Electronic Payment
Advice) software further enhanced automation by enabling store-level
matching of daily EPA summaries against point-of-sale data.

M&S reports measurable benefits from the implementation:

• Reconciliation time was significantly reduced
• Manual data entry was minimized through automated multi-format feeds
• Bank credit delays are now flagged, allowing the finance team to act promptly and retain interest earnings

The credit card reconciliation project was one of the fastest projects
M&S has ever turned around, according to Project Manager Helen
Davies, who shared, “We are more in control of the information and
payments from the bank. Timely reporting enables checking of
banks credits, which means late credits are acted upon and we
don’t lose out on interest. These factors have translated into
significant cost-savings for M&S.”