Improvement the workflow in the accounting office

About the client

Our client is a company that provides accounting services to small and medium-sized enterprises. Currently, they employ ten qualified accountants. Good cooperation with the client and timely preparation of documents is the most important issue in this business. They provide services for about 300 companies per month, which consumes all time and human resources.

Motivation to implement RPA solution:

The company’s customers receive many invoices every month from various channels such as suppliers, vendors, contractors, and even company employees. All these documents should be submitted to the accounting office by a specific day of the month. The processing of paper and electronic invoices has traditionally been one of the most time-consuming tasks. It takes time for the accounting office and the client, who has to prepare a “packet” of documents.

The biggest problem, however, is the workflow related to the timing of delivering documents from clients. It often happens that the customer loses receipts or invoices that he should collect throughout the month. Therefore, the solution would be to create a habit of archiving documents and sending them to the accounting office as soon as it is possible. 

The audit covered activities:

The time needed to process one document is approximately 2 minutes. Each client delivers an average of 50 different types of documents to the accounting office per month – the accountant of the client must enter all of them into the system. 

For an accounting office, this means 500 hours of work on document processing each month (50 hours per employee). Additionally – this time accumulates in the settlement period, which results in the necessity to work overtime. 

According to conversations with clients, it takes about 3 hours to collect the necessary documents.

In the automation phase we:

• developed a methodology for the automation of existing systems
• chose peripheral applications supporting automation
• measured the parameters of the solution according to the specific client’s needs
• have prepared a tutorial and webinar for end customers
• made improvements based on customer feedback

Description of the work performed by a robot

Our main goal was to improve the document flow between the client and the accounting office. For this purpose, we used a smartphone application that allows you to scan documents to a pdf file and send them directly to the designated accountant. The application also allows you to mark the email containing the invoice. The marked document is also sent to the accounting office without having to remember about it. The client-side robot sends the captured and marked invoices to the appropriate folder on the accounting office’s disk. A robot operating in the accounting system reads the sent documents and prepares a report on an ongoing basis. The accountant receives pre-processed data, which significantly improves his further work

Results:

The most important result was the improvement of cooperation between the accounting office and entrepreneurs. And also fewer errors resulting from the preparation of documents “at the last minute”. Accounting office staff now work standard hours all month long – no need to work overtime which positively affects work-life balance and employee performance. 

Thanks to the time saved, the company can serve new customers and scale the business more easily with robots.