- Aviation
- Finance department
Fewer steps, freer employees: Using RPA to create invoices in SAP
Creating and processing invoices in SAP involves many repetitive, time-consuming steps for accounting teams, increasing the risk of delays, errors and burnout. Ciphix developed a digital workforce to automate 95% of ad hoc invoice creation for our client, eliminating inefficiencies and freeing this employee time to spend on more value-adding tasks.
Use case: Too many manual steps in creating invoices
Organisations are increasingly realising that manually driven processes can lead to inefficiencies, high costs and a host of other issues. Our client recognised one such instance in the communication between two teams: the business department, which submits a high volume of invoice requests, and the accounting department, which is tasked with checking for and retrieving any missing information, creating the invoice in SAP, processing it and finally sending it to the customer.
With so many steps involving human interference, this workflow had become overly time and cost intensive. Plus, it was clear that employees would rather focus on more engaging tasks. These pain points made the ad hoc invoice creation process a great candidate for automation, and our client was ready to seize the opportunity
Our solution: Automating invoice creation increases team satisfaction
To facilitate our client’s goals for a more efficient invoicing process, we implemented a digital workforce that integrates with SAP. Built using UiPath’s RPA technology, the robot handles many of the steps that had been burdening the team – leaving more human time and energy to dedicate to other areas.Â
The process starts when an employee submits an Excel template to the robot with the required data to create the invoice (client name, client code, activities to be invoiced, invoice amount and tax type). The robot then performs the following tasks:
- Daily check for new invoice requests
- Processing the invoice in SAP, creating a new unique invoice number
- Completing the invoice template in Word and exporting to PDF
- Sending the invoice to the client through email
Now that a digital workforce handles the creation of invoices, the process is nearly free of human interference. Our robot automates 95% of the process, thereby saving the company over 750 hours on a yearly basis. Thanks to their new RPA solution, our client enjoys faster processing times, lower costs, reduced errors, and more satisfied employees who are set up for success every day.
