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Empowering teams through effortless financial integration.

The Business: 
UK's Leading Independent Provider of Heating and Plumbing

Direct Heating & Plumbing Merchants is a UK-based supplier of heating, plumbing, and bathroom products with branches in
Southend, Chelmsford, Benfleet, and Colchester. They provide a wide range of stock including boilers, radiators, underfloor heating, bathroom suites, showers, taps, and over 9,000 boiler spare parts.

 

In addition to supplying trade professionals and homeowners, they
offer in-branch advice, free quotes, and showroom displays, along with next-day delivery services. While they focus on product supply rather than installation, their combination of stock availability, knowledgeable staff, and multiple locations makes them a convenient resource for plumbing and heating needs, particularly across Essex and the surrounding areas.

The Challenge:
A Time Consuming Manual Process

The company’s finance team faced a recurring challenge with statement reconciliation. The process of collecting statements, checking each transaction against the ledger, and identifying missing entries was highly manual and time-consuming. To make matters more difficult, statements were typically only reconciled at the end of the month, meaning the team had to wait for everything to arrive before they could begin.

 

For the person responsible, this was a lengthy, repetitive task that involved detailed comparisons and the use of VLOOKUPs to try and resolve queries. For larger clients in particular, identifying and working through discrepancies could take a considerable amount of time, often delaying query resolution and adding extra pressure to the month-end process.

The guidance and support from Open ECX transformed what could have been a complex integration into a seamless process; they became an extension of our team. Every question was answered quickly, and we felt fully confident every step of the way.”
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The Solution: 
From Manual Checks to Real-Time Clarity

Working with Open ECX, Direct Heating & Plumbing successfully integrated with Intact, creating a seamless and efficient process. Weekly statements are now automatically emailed and matched against the ledger. Unlike invoicing and ordering integrations, which focus on capturing data at the point of transaction, statement reconciliation works by comparing the supplier’s record of activity against the company’s own ledger in real time. This ensures every payment, credit, and invoice is fully aligned, with discrepancies highlighted instantly rather than being left to manual checks at the end of the month.


Through the Open ECX portal, discrepancies are flagged, and finance teams can quickly identify missing or mismatched entries. This transparency also links into the weekly payment run, where
outstanding amounts are clearly visible and can be resolved before payments are processed. The result is a streamlined workflow that reduces complexity, supports more accurate reporting, and ensures the team is working with live information rather than delayed month end data.


Direct Heating & Plumbing also credits the high level of support from Open ECX as a key factor in their success. With a dedicated contact who understands their processes in detail and responds quickly to queries, the integration was smooth and effective from the start.

The Benefits: 
Increasing Staff Morale Across the Team

The benefits have been significant. What was once a task restricted to a single person can now be carried out by anyone in the team, reducing dependency on one individual and protecting the business from unnecessary risk. Issues are spotted immediately, errors are avoided, and knowledge is shared across the department.


The faster process has also further strengthened supplier relationships. By resolving queries more quickly and improving communication, the finance team has made already strong
partnerships even more efficient and collaborative.


Crucially, the statement reconciliation process is no longer a dreaded manual job but a straightforward, reliable task. The team is more efficient, staff morale has improved, and Direct Heating & Plumbing now has a reconciliation process that matches the scale and speed of their wider operations.

We’ve had to work at pace onboarding our customers with Open ECX. Throughout the project, the Open ECX onboarding team have responded brilliantly, creating customers’ connections at such a speed that our project will finish earlier than the anticipated deadline.
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