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Case Study: Retail / Wholesale

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This premium pet food specialist opted for a document management system to ensure security and transparency for its accounts payable accounting as well as effective liquidity/cashflow management.

Munich-based start-up AlphaPet Ventures currently handles several thousand orders every day. The company, which is one of the leading providers of premium pet food, was given an extra boost through a multi-million growth investment.

The accounting of the pet food specialist, created by the merger of two start-ups, was organized quite differently. Incoming invoices were stored in part as PDF files on servers, while the rest was held in paper form in folders and sent weekly in large envelopes to an external accounting department. Due to the extreme growth of the companies and even more so upon their merger, the flood of paper has increased enormously and storing invoices in PDF form proved to be inefficient. It was increasingly difficult, very time-consuming and only possible with a time delay to obtain an overview of the company's liabilities. However, the young company's success hinged on having a tight overview of its cashflow at all times.

Country:
Germany
Industry:
Retail / Wholesale
Department:
Controlling |Accounting
Deployment:
Cloud

Beyond the ROI issue, DocuWare Cloud was well worth it from day one. Beyond a high level of transparency, we also gained in speed and security. Our improved cash management allows us to invest more money into our growth, into areas like warehousing and marketing. It also makes for a good relationship with suppliers. We pride ourselves as a premium partner who ensures accurate payments.

Claus W. Küster
CFO, AlphaPet Ventures GmbH, Munich (Germany)

Lease only what you need

So the company decided it was time to introduce a document management system (DMS). DocuWare was chosen because of its tamper-free security and ease of use. A main argument, however, was that DocuWare could be used in the cloud. A cloud-based solution is quick to implement, with maximum flexibility and scalability, without incurring large fixed costs. At the beginning of October 2016, the system was launched with the support of DocuWare experts. Within one day it ran flawlessly with only minor improvements. No additional hardware had to be purchased and the necessary equipment for scanning documents was already on hand.

More money for growth

Today, the approximately 50 to 100 invoices received daily by email or in paper form are immediately archived in the central document pool. Indexing is automated and only manually enhanced with information not readable from the invoice. The system automatically captures booking account number, cost center, performance period, and also the planned payment date. They are then transferred to a digital workflow to ensure verification within 24 hours. The invoices - controlled by accounting and cost centers - appear in the task list of the employees responsible for verifying and approving. The document is released with a digital “approved” stamp and forwarded to the accounts payable staff for booking and payment. If changes are made, the corresponding requests are communicated to the finance department via the workflow. After adjustments are made, the workflow goes into another round. Payments are marked in the index. The external accounting department is now integrated into DocuWare Cloud and receives the receipts to be posted immediately after approval. CFO Claus W. Küster is very satisfied with this solution, since he now has an overview of all invoices that are at the company at all times and can immediately see whether they have been verified, posted and when they are due for payment. This enables the company to harness their cashflow, even on a daily basis. 

Verifiability is guaranteed

Thanks to tamper-proof filing, legal regulations can now easily be complied. The start-up company is also required to provide its investors with an auditor's certificate. Transparency and verifiability are guaranteed by the DMS. With just a few mouse clicks, the necessary documents can now be made available to the auditors immediately – without a long search through folders.
Collaboration with the company's external accounting department is much simpler today and, above all, very timely. Previously, all invoices had to be printed out and handwritten with important notes before they were sent over for posting. Thanks to the comprehensive indexing of the documents, everyone authorized can access all the information in the central document pool at any time.

Without DocuWare, it wouldn't be possible to handle our strong growth and the huge volume of documents so well."
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