Gala Group is a diversified Indian conglomerate with a strong presence across multiple business verticals and legal entities. Best known for its candles and home fragrance products, the Group has built a reputation for quality and scale over decades of operation. But like many multi-entity businesses that have grown organically over time, Gala’s back-office infrastructure had not kept pace with the complexity of its front-end operations.
Running payables across multiple legal entities is not a simple accounting exercise. Each entity has its own vendor relationships, its own approval hierarchies, its own GST obligations, and its own compliance requirements. When those entities are managed through disconnected systems and manual processes, what should be a straightforward purchase-to-pay cycle becomes a sprawling, error-prone operation that consumes far more time and attention than it should.
50% faster GST reconciliation
Automated matching of invoices against government returns, combined with structured mismatch flagging
~40% shorter audit cycles
With every invoice, approval, and GST status tracked in a single platform and organized in real time, audit preparation no longer requires a dedicated effort.
70% reduction in processing efforts
AI-led ingestion, validation, and exception handling have removed manual data entry from the equation.
The Problem: Payables used to run on paperwork and manual effort
The accounts payable function at Gala Group was holding the business together through sheer manual effort. Invoices were being processed one by one, with each requiring individual checks for accuracy, vendor details, line-item validation, and GST classifications. The process was entirely dependent on the people doing it, which meant it was only as fast, consistent, and error-free as those individuals could manage under pressure.
The team was stuck in paperwork. Retrieving the right data for a given invoice, whether to verify a rate, confirm a PO match, or check a vendor’s GST registration, meant navigating multiple systems and files. Reconciliation was slow and visibility into where any given invoice stood in the approval cycle was limited. Managers who needed to understand the state of payables at any point had to ask, wait, and piece together an answer manually.
GST reconciliation was its own problem entirely. Matching purchase invoices against government returns, identifying mismatches, following up with vendors to resolve discrepancies, and doing all of this within the timelines required for compliance, was a time-consuming process that generated constant follow-up work. Delays in GST reconciliation didn’t just create compliance risk. They also meant the team was perpetually dealing with a backlog of unresolved items that made month-end close slower and more stressful than it needed to be.
Across multiple legal entities, the absence of standardized controls made things worse. Each entity had developed its own informal ways of handling approvals, tax rules, and compliance checks. What was consistent practice in one entity might be handled entirely differently in another. This inconsistency made it impossible to enforce group-level policies without manual intervention at every step, and it created audit exposure that leadership was increasingly uncomfortable with.
The Solution: From manual checks to a single intelligent P2P layer
Gala Group partnered with Finifi to replace a fragmented, effort-heavy payables process with a unified, automated P2P system built on Microsoft Dynamics 365. The objective was clear: eliminate manual data entry, standardize controls across all entities, automate GST reconciliation, and give the team a single platform where every invoice, approval, and compliance status was visible in real time.
PO Validation
The starting point was removing manual effort from invoice processing entirely. Finifi’s AI-led ingestion engine reads incoming invoices regardless of format, extracts the relevant data, and validates it against defined parameters including vendor details, PO matching, line-item accuracy, and GST classifications before anything enters Dynamics 365. What had previously required individual manual checks on every invoice now happens automatically at the point of entry. Processing time drops, errors fall, and the team is freed from the most repetitive part of their workday.
GSTR 2A/2B Reconciliation
Finifi introduced automated matching of purchase invoices against government returns, with a clear mismatch flagging and structured follow-up workflow built directly into the system. When a discrepancy is detected, it is surfaced immediately as an exception with the relevant details, rather than discovered weeks later during a manual reconciliation exercise. Vendor follow-ups are triggered systematically, resolution is tracked, and the entire GST reconciliation process runs on a predictable cycle rather than a reactive one.
Exception Handling
Rather than routing every invoice through a manual review queue, Finifi’s exception-first approach ensures that only invoices with genuine issues, a mismatch, a missing field, an approval deviation, or a GST discrepancy, are flagged for human attention. The team works through a prioritized list of items that need a decision, not an undifferentiated pile of invoices that all look the same. This is where processing speed accelerates most dramatically and where the team’s attention is finally directed toward judgment rather than data entry.
Entity-Wise Compliance and Approval Controls
One of the most significant structural improvements was the introduction of entity-wise approval matrices, tax rules, and compliance policies within a single platform. Each legal entity within Gala Group now operates under its own defined set of rules, consistently enforced by the system rather than relying on individuals to remember and apply them correctly. Group-level oversight is maintained without slowing down entity-level operations. And because the controls are embedded in the platform, compliance is not something the team has to think about separately. It is built into every transaction.
Audit Ready Book Keeping
Every invoice, GST status update, approval decision, and compliance check is tracked within a single platform in real time. The team no longer needs to chase status updates across email threads and spreadsheets. Finance leadership has a live view of payables across all entities. And when an audit comes around, the documentation is already organized, searchable, and complete, cutting both the time and the stress involved in audit preparation significantly.
“Our payables team was spending most of their time doing checks that a system should be doing for them. Finifi changed that completely. Controls are consistent, GST reconciliation runs on its own, and we go into every audit knowing our records are clean.”
The Transformation: Payables function that runs on systems, not stress
The shift at Gala Group was felt across every part of the accounts payable function. What had been a process defined by individual effort, manual checks, and reactive problem-solving became one defined by automation, visibility, and proactive exception management.
The team’s daily experience changed fundamentally. Instead of working through an inbox of invoices requiring individual attention, they were now working from a structured exceptions queue where every flagged item had a clear reason and a clear next step. The cognitive load dropped. Processing times shortened. And the anxiety around month-end close, which had previously involved a last-minute scramble to reconcile GST and close outstanding approvals, gave way to a process that was largely complete before the deadline arrived.
Across entities, the standardization of controls had an effect that went beyond efficiency. For the first time, leadership could be confident that payables were being handled consistently across the group, without needing to manually verify that each entity was following the right procedures. Entity-specific rules were enforced by the system, group-level oversight was available on demand, and compliance was no longer dependent on institutional memory or individual diligence.
Audit preparation, which had previously required dedicated effort to pull together documentation from multiple systems and files, became a matter of accessing records that were already organized and complete within the platform. Audit cycles shortened, and the team approached them with confidence rather than dread.
