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MicroWarehouse Ltd is Ireland's largest independently-owned IT distributor with relationships with more than 500 resellers. It sells PC systems, peripherals, software and licensing products from a focused vendor portfolio which includes brands such as Microsoft, Apple, Nikon, and Sony. With over €3 million of products in stock in their 15,000 square foot facility in Dublin the company can offer next day delivery for almost every order. To save time and money with the processing of thousands of invoices, they turned to ReadSoft partner Adest, and ReadSoft for a solution.

KEEPING THINGS BALANCED
Sean Dunne, Financial Controller; MicroWarehouse Ireland, heads up a team of three responsible for a balance sheet valued in excess of nine million euros. His team processes between 10,000 -15,000 vendor invoices per year. Dunne's original aim was to deliver a 'full blown' electronic data interchange (EDI) solution to transmit invoice data between key vendors and MicroWarehouse.

Andrew Frazer, Managing Director of ReadSoft partner company, Adest, which worked with Dunne, explains the unusual situation: "Despite trying to get main suppliers onto EDI, it was not happening quickly enough and all invoices received had to be processed manually. The ADESTAP product combined with ReadSoft INVOICES was the obvious answer for MicroWarehouse to process all their vendor invoices."

"The invoices emailed to the team would have to be manually printed off before we could process them," observes Dunne. "Processing invoices was therefore identified as a huge drain on resource, resulting in delays, especially at month end. It was a process that we believed should be automated."

This was why the company engaged Adest, a leading supplier and developer of Accounts Payable (AP) software solutions.

RAPID COLLECTION
Adest was challenged to design and implement an AP solution for MicroWarehouse that would enable all its vendors to send their invoices by e-mail as PDFs. Received invoices would then be automatically captured, identified, then matched and approved by the ADESTAP system before being electronically posted to MicroWarehouse's SQL based Microsoft Dynamics system.

Adest began by integrating COLLECTOR, an add-on to document management specialist ReadSoft's data capture software. This was used to automatically import the invoices attached to an email. Working in the background, COLLECTOR detects any attachment - including PDF, TIF, PNG and JPEG - immediately transferring it to ReadSoft's data capture software where the information can be extracted and interpreted.

The benefit for MicroWarehouse is that emailed data is processed automatically by the Adest system in the same way as paper invoices, allowing the team to handle every type of invoice, applying the same business rules in the same way. Dunne explains how this has changed the working processes, "Invoices arriving by email are now directed to a single dedicated mailbox, the attachments are extracted and those that meet validation are automatically processed for posting."

As each email is processed, it is removed from the mail server and archived. As a result, a limitless number of incoming invoices can be processed and be ready for approval in a matter of seconds without fear of overloading MicroWarehouse's systems.

"Our invoice processing can now be achieved on a daily basis," says Dunne. "This is made possible because AD- ESTAP and ReadSoft's INVOICES software work together to integrate with the company's financial system."

The solution fitted well with the aims of MicroWarehouse to eventually deliver a fully automated system. It automatically extracts and captures information of interest from the incoming invoice; the information is then validated by INVOICES and passed to ADESTAP where they are matched, coded, authorised and approved before being exported to MicroWarehouse's ERP by the accounts payable staff.

Adest provided MicroWarehouse with a helpful feature of its system. "Because the same product codes were referenced on both the purchase order and the supplier invoice, using line item extraction, the Adest system could match each invoice to the corresponding purchase order information at line item level" says Frazer. "That was very beneficial to MicroWarehouse as COLLECTOR and INVOICES could be configured to work at both levels, with ADESTAP providing matching and approval of each invoice at line item level prior to posting to their Microsoft Dynamics application."

THE IDEAL CUSTOMER
For Adest, MicroWarehouse was an ideal customer; "Processing in excess of 12,000 invoices per annum into SQL based Microsoft Dynamics is a perfect starting point," says Frazer. "That all came together to speed up the install, and help MicroWarehouse realise a fast and significant return on investment."

Since the system install was completed the results have been apparent to Dunne and his team: "We no longer see bottlenecks, the system is quicker to manage and more accurate. Now the team can be deployed to resolve problems rather than pushing paper."

"Automation represents a better way to operate; exceptions and the occasional OCR issue are dealt with immediately by the team and where necessary passed onto management for approval," concludes Dunne. "We are timelier when dealing with vendor invoices and there are fewer delays, this means we are able to issue financial reports faster All round, there is a lot less stress."
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