Key Features
- Automated invoice processing
- Intelligent document routing
- Access to documents any time, any place
- 80% reduction in time spent processing invoices
Overview
Purple offer support services for people with disabilities and for businesses.
Purple’s vision is to be the catalyst for change in creating opportunities that transform futures by bringing together disabled people and business for a single purpose.
Their mission is to transform thinking and change the conversation to support businesses and disabled people, creating sustainable solutions for the benefit of society.
Purple is led by the Board of Directors and Executive Management Team, supported by a team of Associates. Between them, they bring a wealth of knowledge well as specialist disability leadership and experience.
The Challenge
Before the commencement of Purple’s digitisation project with Key Digital, Purple’s Accounts Payable team were manually processing around 6,500 invoices per month.
The majority of invoices processed are from carers associated with Purple’s clients with physical disabilities. As the carers prefer to be paid weekly, each invoice received is time critical to be included within weekly payment schedules.
Invoices were received via physical mail or a non-standardised email format making it difficult for the AP team to extract the information needed. Each individual invoice had to be manually checked by a team member, then information was extracted and manually entered into a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet was then sorted and distributed to the Client’s account manager for approval.
Upon receipt of invoice approvals, the same information was then manually entered into Sage with nominal codes where necessary for the payment run.
This labour intensive process was prone to human error, taking hundreds of man-hours per week to complete with repeated duplication of data entry proving to be time-consuming and costly.
For these reasons, Purple engaged Key Digital to advise on a solution to make their processes more productive.
The Solution
Key Digital’s implementation of DocuWare into Purple’s accounts department has allowed invoices to be received through a dedicated “area@” email address. When sent to this dedicated email, DocuWare is able to place the invoices into specific document trays for each client by area thus making the approval workflow more streamlined.
DocuWare then intelligently captures the invoice data, including all line item information, and intelligently indexes each invoice. A workflow then directs the digital invoice to the allocated Client Account Manager, sorted by area. DocuWare will also highlight any issues or queries and alert them to the account manager to resolve.
Any associated or supporting documents are automatically collated together with the invoice and are made immediately visible to the Account Manager. Invoices and related documents can be accessed within DocuWare and approved by the manager using any device in any location.
Once the approval is received, the AP team are able to easily export all of the necessary information into Sage via area exports.
“Key Digital’s DocuWare solution has revolutionised our accounts payable process, reducing invoice processing time by 60% and freeing up valuable resources.”
– David Ormrod, Senior Purchase Ledger Co-ordinator
Benefits
After completing phase 1 of the DocuWare integration, Purple’s Accounts Payable team now have a full auditable trail of documents entered into the system. Thanks to DocuWare the AP team have been able to show a 60% reduction in the time spent processing invoices and inputting data, freeing up their time to liaise with suppliers. This figure is expected to rise to 80% once DocuWare’s artificial intelligence layer has completed its machine learning phase.