- Construction
- Finance department
Processing of purchase invoices automated by RPA
Our client, a construction company, had some inefficiencies when it came to processing the purchase invoices. Incomplete invoices for example cause payment due dates to expire and thereby delaying projects. We offer an efficient and intelligent RPA solution that automates the processing of purchase invoices. Our solution reduces the amount of errors, throughput times and transaction costs.
Use case: Manually processing purchase invoices
The finance department of a construction company challenged us to find an efficient solution to process their purchase invoices. Once a purchase order has been placed, but some information is still missing, the orders cannot be processed. When the information is received, employees have to manually add this to the purchase orders. One can see how this becomes problematic as the process requires a lot of manual work. This causes the process to be prone to human error. Additionally, there is a time constraint. Because incomplete invoices can cause the payment due date to expire (thereby delaying projects), it’s important that invoices are processed as soon as they are completed.
The process of completing the purchase orders requires clicking through many applications, which takes up a lot of time. Secondly, the process is prone to human error, as all information is filled out manually. However, it is the perfect case to implement an RPA-based solution.
Our solution: Automating the declaration of purchase invoices
We have provided an efficient solution by automating the declaration of purchase invoices. A digital workforce was developed using RPA technology, which is able to perform all steps securely without input of a human operator. Now that the workload of employees is reduced, they can spend more time on other valuable tasks, which increases employee satisfaction.
Our robot is set to perform each of the following steps:
- Start Invoice Control session from Centric
- Find current invoice Arco Invoice
- Check which order numbers belong to current invoice
- Check whether sales figures are correct
- Create Excel file with report of results
Our robot almost fully automates (98%) the process and hereby saves over 969 hours on a yearly basis. The automation of the process reduces the amount of errors by 95% and the invoices are processed earlier as well. This decreases the chance that an invoice due date expires. We managed to successfully create a solution that reduces throughput times and costs and increases user satisfaction.
Our RPA solution is effective, efficient and reliable. Workers can stop wasting time on adjusting incomplete purchase orders and refocus on work that matters.
