Case Study: Multinational Energy Organization achieves reconciliation of hundreds of millions in unapplied cash and streamlined accounting operations with Protiviti

How an Unforeseen Post-merger Crisis Led to Finance and Accounting Operations Improvement

Multinational Energy Organization faced a post‑merger backlog of tens of thousands of accounts receivable line items and hundreds of millions of dollars in unapplied cash that needed reconciliation on a three‑month deadline. The company engaged Protiviti for accounting and finance cleanup and consulting (leveraging Protiviti’s Internal Audit, Risk, Business & Technology Consulting capabilities and additional resources from Robert Half) to address billing errors, open receivables and process breakdowns.

Protiviti deployed a team to manually reconcile payments and invoices, correct invoices, negotiate collections with partners, reconcile the AR ledger and re‑engineer revenue accrual tools. Protiviti’s work reconciled the bulk of the unapplied cash, reviewed thousands of payments and tens of thousands of AR items, cut 90% of the accrual workload, shortened the monthly close by several days, improved cash management and employee morale, and eliminated the need for ongoing outside help.