The introduction of the DMS in May 2020 went quickly and smoothly. In the very first week, all departments in Bitsch and office in Martinach were integrated into their workflow for invoice approval. Thanks to the intuitive use of the system, employees immediately got into the groove of the new flow of their multi-stage approval process.
Today, all incoming invoices are archived in a central document pool. Suppliers already send about half of them by email, and these are archived in DocuWare using drag & drop. Paper invoices are scanned, keyworded in the accounting program, assigned to a clerk or department and then archived. This automatically launches the workflow.
An invoice appears in the task list of the responsible clerk for review. In the purchasing department, for example, this person checks invoices from large suppliers to ensure that quantities, prices and agreed conditions are correct. The invoice is then automatically forwarded - depending on the defined release limit - to the department head and the managing director, who checks and releases it. Then it automatically appears in the accounting software as "released" and can be included in the subsequent payment run.
Transparency is guaranteed
Their workflow has made invoice approvals much faster and more transparent. "I can now immediately see who has or has not approved an invoice and when," says the CFO. He also appreciates that, thanks to the system's convenient full-text search, any authorized employee can access receipts very quickly. For example, to find a supplier for a particular product in response to a customer's inquiry or to get an overview of monthly electricity consumption for the quality assurance department. "We can find receipts in seconds, without anyone having to run to the archive and hunt for documents in folders," says Roland Steiner with satisfaction. Overall, employees save an estimated ten working hours per week on filing, invoice approvals and searches, which they can now use for other tasks. "The investment in DocuWare has already paid off," says the CFO.
Employees estimate saving approximately ten hours per week
A contract management system is about to be implemented. From dairy farmer's supply contracts to maintenance contracts for their trucks: hundreds of contracts will be scanned and archived. With DocuWare, they can be efficiently processed, versioned and managed in a future-proof way.