Success Story
Charter Hall
Charter Hall centralized treasury operations, automated complex calculations and replaced manual GL journal processing with an integrated workflow that improved controls and saved significant time.
total managed property portfolio
commercial properties across Australia
working days per month saved through GL journal automation
About
Charter Hall Group is one of Australia’s leading property groups, owning and managing commercial real estate across the country. Founded in 1991, it manages a diversified portfolio that includes office buildings, supermarket-anchored retail centers and a growing base of industrial assets for institutional, wholesale and retail investors.
Solutions leveraged:
Challenges
In 2013, Charter Hall’s treasury team needed a centralized operating model across front, middle and back office activities. Each fund carried its own debt facilities, which increased operational complexity and governance pressure.
Key challenges included:
- Creating a single treasury model that supported multiple funds while enforcing consistent internal controls.
- Reducing manual effort in producing GL journals across 25 funds, which consumed significant accounting time each month.
- Automating spreadsheet-based treasury calculations for accruals, derivatives, fees and amortization to reduce error risk.
- Aligning treasury accounting principles across the business to support consistent treatment and reporting.
- Improving system stability and resiliency, including disaster recovery planning, while meeting audit expectations.
Solution
Charter Hall partnered with Ripple Treasury to support a treasury management restructure built around centralized processes, stronger controls and tighter integration with finance teams and systems. The team completed a detailed scoping exercise with multiple stakeholders, then implemented capabilities that supported audit scrutiny and evolving requirements throughout delivery. These solutions were deployed:
- Treasury Operations And Controls: Re-designed treasury operations with an enforced internal control structure, supporting a centralized model across Charter Hall funds.
- GL Interface: Implemented a general ledger (GL) interface to automate posting of treasury accounting events and reduce manual involvement, including integration into Yardi.
- Treasury Accounting Standardization: Harmonized accounting principles and centrally managed GL mapping to align treasury transaction treatment across funds.
- Automated Treasury Calculations: Automated accruals on debt, derivatives and fees plus amortization, replacing spreadsheet methodologies and reducing inconsistency risk.
- Private Cloud With SQL Back-End And Disaster Recovery: Improved stability, reliability and flexibility through a SQL back-end accessed via private cloud services plus an outsourced disaster recovery plan.
“The immediate results of the GL interface were significant. What originally took 20 fund accountants a day per month to process across 25 funds, now is centrally managed by an automated interface. This process improvement has allowed the fund accountants to transition from a data processing role to focus on other value add activities.”
Benefits
Ripple Treasury helped Charter Hall move away from manual, error-prone spreadsheets, strengthening internal controls while freeing up significant time each month. Key benefits include:
- Automated GL journal processing into Charter Hall’s accounting system, shifting work away from manual data processing.
- Saved an estimated 20 working days per month by automating a process that previously required producing high-volume journal lines.
- Reduced the potential for human error in complex treasury calculations by replacing spreadsheets with automated methods.
- Strengthened internal controls and reduced fraud and error risk through centralized processes and automated interfaces.
- Added the ability to capture and report amortization of borrowing costs through centrally managed schedules and regular journal generation.
Conclusion
Charter Hall used Ripple Treasury to centralize treasury operations, standardize accounting treatment and automate the workflows that previously created operational risk. With automated GL journals, controlled calculation processes and an audit-reviewed implementation, the treasury team improved efficiency while strengthening governance foundations for ongoing growth.
“Corporate Treasuries are often faced with ongoing and necessary internal measures to ensure the successful execution of something of this nature, scope and size. Whilst this internal pressure can often lead to delays in projects, the flexibility Ripple Treasury were able to provide enabled the project to progress with minimal disruption. This allowed for a timely and successful implementation.”