smartPayablesGreencross Vets Case Study

The BusinessGreencross Vets are an ASX listed network of veterinary practices across Australia. At the time of writing these practices numbered in excess of 70 around the country utilising the talents of more than 900 staff. Although Greencross Vets is part of a national organisation, all practices are run and managed by a local team of dedicated professionals who are passionate about pets.

Greencross Vets are considered to be the most advanced practices within the veterinary industry. They are well equipped to provide the best in medical care and diagnostic testing using some of the most advanced medical equipment available.

Greencross practices are committed to offering clients and their pets comprehensive and exceptional client and patient care. They pride themselves on always providing a secure and safe environment for the animals that they care for.

The ChallengeGreencross identified the need for an automated workflow tool within the Accounts Payable department where the amount of invoices being stored and manually handled was rapidly growing. At the time each clinic would forward supplier invoices to head office in postage paid envelopes. This exposed Greencross to the constant risk of delayed or lost information in the mail. The rising postage costs associated with this transfer of information was also becoming quite significant.

“The lag in the time it took to receive invoices through the mail and invoices going missing in the mail were the primary concerns for Greencross,” says Greencross’ Financial Controller Katherine Baker.

Greencross needed a solution that would eliminate the excessive costs and delays associated with the current methods of processing, filing and retrieving records. In addition any new software would be required to integrate seamlessly with the existing financial system. The business was using a combination of Sage, Wage Easy, RX Works and the Microsoft Office suite throughout its current processes.

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The SolutionAfter investigating the options available on the market Greencross Vets identified Redmap’s smartPayables solution as the answer. Implementing smartPayables would provide the organisation with an efficient and reliable workflow and document management tool. This solution offered a much more efficient alternative to the tedious manual invoice approval processes that were currently in place. As well as this the easy to use document management system provided a simple solution to document storage concerns.

Automating the approvals processes at Greencross Vets began with the initial elimination of the postage of invoices from each of the clinics. Invoices for goods and services are now scanned immediately and emailed to a central email account at head office for processing. Removing the previous manual processes eliminated the wasted cost of postage. It also removed any chance of invoices going missing in the post.

smartPayables captures the attachments to the emails and identifies the clinic’s location based on the email address from which the invoice is received. Highly intuitive data recognition software then ‘reads’ the scanned invoice and extracts the relevant data. This data is then verified by an Accounts Payables clerk to ensure 100% accuracy. A GL code for each invoice is also nominated at this point.

The majority of invoices are preapproved by staff at the clinic level, where this preapproval does not exist the invoice is automatically routed for approval. The relevant approver is selected based on a set of rules stipulated by Greencross. The managers simply receive an email with a link to the invoices that require approval. Invoices can then either be approved or queried with the click of a button.

All approved invoices are then uploaded to the ERP system. ‘Redmap has been built to integrate with our Sage accounting package,’ says Baker. Once posted to the ERP system then invoices are filed in the document management system. When required staff are able to simply locate filed invoices based on common invoice tags such as vendor name, invoice number, date and so on. Locating these filed documents is quick and they can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

Initially the smartPayables solution was implemented entirely within the Accounts Payables department. Its initial success encouraged the business to implement in other departments. ‘Now I, as the financial controller use it and so does HR for document filing’, Baker continued. ‘smartPayables provides us with a much more efficient audit trail, a more efficient way to process payments and the ability to significantly cut down on the amount of paper in the office and the amount of filing required.’

“Redmap has provided us with a solution to help us to efficiently run our Accounts Payable processes. We worked

with the team at Redmap to make sure all our requirements were included and this has led to a program that will save

us significant time in what was otherwise a very labour intensive process.”

Katerine Baker, Financial Controller | Greencross Vets

ResultsThe investment in a Redmap smartPayables solution has provided Greencross Vets with significant and immediate benefits. These include:

A reduction in the operational costs of the business such as office consumables and postage. This has helped the business to reduce unnecessary expenditure;

Staff at Greencross Vets now have comprehensive and immediate access to relevant filed records from anywhere in the world;

The improved control and management of outgoing payments to vendors. This has reduced associated cash control risks and enhanced the reporting and visibility throughout the process; and

Seamless integration with the Sage financial system has ensured that invoices flow smoothly through the approvals workflows and are automatically posted for payment at specified dates. This has saved staff at Greencross Vets the countless hours of manual data entry that would otherwise be required.