E-billing for automatic invoice approval

Royal Gazelle

Gazelle makes about 300,000 bicycles every year in its factory in Dieren, Gelderland. Manufacturing one bicycle requires roughly 200 parts. For this, Gazelle relies on approximately 100 regular, strategic suppliers, who collectively account for about 6,000 order invoices per year.

The timely processing of these invoices is crucial, becomes clear from Edwin's story. "If we miss 1 part, then we can't make the bike and production comes to a temporary halt. We can't. So we absolutely want to prevent a supplier from not delivering to us anymore because we pay late."

Automated invoice processing with Basware

That's why Gazelle wanted to get started with automated invoice processingseveral years ago . The choice quickly fell on Basware, says Edwin. "We wanted an invoice processing solution with a good name in the market, not a small package. That gives us more confidence. Basware is highly regarded everywhere." Especially in combination with SAP, which Gazelle also works with, Basware has earned its spurs in the invoice processing market.

"We absolutely want to prevent a supplier
from no longer supplying us because we are late in paying."

 

After first trying with another implementation partner, Edwin and his team finally knocked on the door of 4Exchange's sister company , ICreative, in 2016. Edwin: "The honest story of sales manager Jeroen Rozeboom had impressed us. Things had unfortunately not gone quite right with the previous implementation partner, so we hoped that he and his colleagues could solve that for us. In the end, ICreative re-implemented Basware and we've made a lot of strides since then."

Matching invoices to order line

For example, Gazelle made the switch to e-billing in cooperation with 4Exchange. "We match order invoices at line level rather than total amount," Edwin explains. "That makes invoice processing complex. Especially when you consider that we regularly receive unstructured invoices of 60 pages. If one line is not recognized and read correctly, then you have a problem. I can still remember us printing out 60-page invoices so that we could check off hundreds of lines with a pen to see which ones were missing. Drama," he looks back on earlier times.

With e-billing , that's no longer an issue. "Then you can be sure that the data on the invoice is correct. The match with the purchase order or goods receipt is created automatically immediately after the e-invoice arrives. Employees no longer have to do anything with it; you only see the invoice when it is already ready in the payment list," says Edwin.

Processing e-invoices goes much faster

So invoice processing is much faster and more accurate thanks to e-billing. Edwin: "That is nice for all parties. The faster we can process invoices, the better we are able to pay invoices on time. That is of course nice for the suppliers because they get paid faster. But it's also nice for us, because it gives us quicker insight into expenses." In addition, a customer often also qualifies for early payment discounts with regular suppliers if they pay faster.

To illustrate the speed of invoice processing, Edwin says that in his early days at Gazelle, 18,000 invoices were processed. "And then we regularly had a backlog, so people from other Finance departments had to step in to process the invoices."

Now a total of more than 30,000 invoices come into the bike shop's Accounts Payable department each year; some 6,000 order invoices and 24,000 expense invoices. The number of FTE dedicated to invoice processing has increased only minimally. That small increase, according to Edwin, is mainly due to the fact that the majority of invoices are cost invoices. These require more manual intervention by employees. Edwin: "After all, there is no goods receipt or purchase order with which to match the invoice. An employee creates the entry and then the budget owner has to approve it."

Suppliers with most and largest invoices first

Where to start once you've decided to make the switch to e-billing ? Edwin outlines how they approached it at Gazelle. "We started the rollout with suppliers who send the most and largest order invoices to us. If you can get the top suppliers to connect, then you have a large portion of your invoices to deal with right away."

"E-billing also delivers something to suppliers:
speed up the processing process and thus payment."

By now, about 80% of incoming order invoices already concern e-billing, he estimates. A significant portion, in other words. "ICreative has guided us during the onboarding of suppliers. When writing to them, we mainly tried to make it clear why we opted for e-billing and that it also benefits them. Namely that e-billing speeds up the processing process and thus ultimately the payment."

Not everyone can or will connect just like that

A good onboarding campaign can be very important to the success of e-billing rollout. After all, not every supplier can or wants to connect to the chosen e-invoicing solution just like that. "Some need a little more of a push than others," agrees Edwin. But even when the will is there, it doesn't always work out. "Some of our suppliers have outdated software, which makes it impossible for them. Especially for suppliers from Asia, it is sometimes still difficult."

In such a case, a customized solution can offer solace. That doesn't have to be complicated. Edwin explains that Gazelle has two major suppliers, with many large invoices, that could not connect to e-billing. 4Exchange came up with a solution for this. In principle, the supplier does not notice anything; they send their invoice by e-mail as usual. Then, with a small detour, it reaches us in the right way.

Automatically process expense invoices with e-billing

In addition to order invoices, some of the cost invoices already come in via e-billing. For example, an employment agency always sends large invoices with many order lines to Gazelle. "Those order lines have to be posted to a different cost center each time. Sometimes we had to create as many as 20 or 30 booking lines with different cost centers. That took a lot of time. But now this supplier delivers the invoice via XML. ICreative has configured that it arrives at line level and is booked automatically in the right way, even if there is no purchase order attached to it."

The Accounting Manager half smiling, half sighing explains that occasionally paper invoices still arrive. Then we just scan them in manually with the copier. From there they come in in the mail and continue their way as a normal cost invoice."