Work · Flower import, Italy and the Netherlands
One flower group, the work behind it.
The Flowers Express group brings cut flowers into Europe from South America and East Africa, through companies in Italy and the Netherlands. Much of what a shipment really costs is settled after the flowers land: clearing, handling, inspection, delivery. That is where we worked.
At a glance · Flowers Express
- 2025–26
- the full year, rebuilt from the original invoices
- 629
- invoice documents read
- 3
- languages: English, Italian and Spanish
- Every
- change approved by a person before it reaches the books
01 · Before
A workbook that had to be right, checked by hand.
Every air shipment comes back on a freight forwarder's invoice: handling, inspections, certificates, delivery, each a separate line. Someone in the accounting office checked each line against the agreed rates, by hand, in one large workbook. By the group's own account, that takes more than twenty hours a month.
The workbook was careful work. It was also the only check. When a charge was wrong and the total still balanced, the row was closed and nobody saw it again.
02 · The approach
Prove it against their year before asking for trust.
Before anyone relied on it, we had the system rebuild the group's whole 2025–26 year from the original invoices, and compared the result with the office's own workbook, cell by cell. Where the two disagreed, we traced each difference to the invoice that settled it.
When our own scoring turned out to flatter the system, by grading it on shipments it was never meant to price, we changed the score and kept the old one on record beside the new.
03 · What the check found
Small errors that had been closed at zero.
The office's arithmetic held almost everywhere. What the check found was the kind of error a careful person misses: a charge billed twice for the same container, a handling fee on more weight than was flown, an overcharge corrected on four invoices and missed on the fifth, a rate heading that had drifted from what the invoices showed, totals that no longer computed.
None was dramatic. Each was the kind of error that only shows up when every line is checked against the deal.
04 · Built for the people who use it
It proposes. The team decides.
Results land in the same layout the office already worked in. Nothing reaches the books until a person approves it. When the system notices a pattern across weeks, a rate that moved or a credit that never arrived, it raises it with the evidence and waits for the team to decide.
It runs in English, Italian and Spanish. Access is set by role, and every change is logged with who made it and why. Every role was tested in a security review, and everything it found was fixed. The group's accountant can read, in plain language, exactly where its data goes.
05 · Flexin
Prices and availability, answered on arrival.
For Flexin, part of the group, we built a system that answers a customer's request with current pricing and availability the moment it arrives, without waiting on a person. By the group's estimate, that takes about an hour of manual work off each customer, every time orders go out.
The newsroom note →06 · What comes next
Figures when they are measured.
Once a full month has closed in the system, we will compare the time it took with the old manual check, and count the credits obtained on charges it raised. Those figures will go here, with their dates.
The twenty hours and the Flexin hour are the group's own figures, not measured by us. The findings come from the system's check of the full 2025–26 year against the office workbook. Hours and money saved are not yet measured.