A real boost for invoice verification

Dieffenbacher GmbH Maschinen- und Anlagenbau is one of the leading manufacturers of press systems and complete production plants for timber and composite materials as well as recycling plants. The company has automated the processing of incoming invoices in SAP with tangro software. “Before we introduced tangro, work in the accounting department was organised manually. At times we could have done with additional capacity to handle the peaks in invoice receipt."

"Thanks to the automated processing of incoming invoices, we are now better able to cope with fluctuations and process the peaks and troughs more effectively,” says Tobias Morath, head of the Accounts Payable team within the Dieffenbacher Group.

At the Dieffenbacher company headquarters in Eppingen, around 40,000 invoice documents are received a year, mainly as PDFs sent to an e-mail address set up for this purpose. tangro recognises and interprets the content and assigns the data to the right fields in the editing screen. This eliminates the arduous task of typing in content, which vastly speeds up the posting process. Staff in the accounting department now have an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of all incoming documents at all times. Appropriate markings also show the administrator at a glance which invoices should be given priority. This ensures that documents are processed in a meaningful order. The option of posting documents in a block or forwarding for approval also ensures rapid processing. “This really simplifies things,” says Morath.

Document approval is handled electronically via the tangro Workflow solution, which maps all the invoice verification processes for a machinery and plant construction firm.

“We really value the fact that tangro worked with us to produce a solution to meet our particular requirements.”

For example, Dieffenbacher receives many invoices relating to services, such as invoices from subcontractors. The verification of these invoice types is completely mapped by tangro.

If individual verification stages are required by other departments or buyers, all it takes is a couple of clicks and the invoice is sent automatically to the right recipient or recipients. All processes can be still traced at a later date.

“At any time, we can see at a glance who approved each stage and can trace this later on too if necessary. The entire process is archived by the workflow history. The same applies to all e-mail correspondence.”

One of the most important criteria for selecting the solution for processing incoming invoices was the extent to which it could be integrated in SAP. “In our eyes, tangro is a market leader in terms of integration in SAP. All editing takes place in a central screen."

"All validation checks also take place in tangro because the solution has direct access to SAP data. We were very happy with that.” 

Intuitive handling was another important added benefit for Dieffenbacher. According to Morath the colouring, the design of the buttons and the self-explanatory system operation are easy to understand and learn. “From IT’s standpoint, the customizing is also clear and can mostly be handled in-house."

And last but not least, the fact that the solution can run perfectly on S/4HANA is also crucial. If Dieffenbacher decides to switch to S/4HANA, this move can be undertaken easily with tangro. So Dieffenbacher feel that they are fit for the future with this solution.