
Good optimisation: Automated invoice processing at HAI
“Wow, that’s cool!” When a user comes out with this level of enthusiasm when they first see new software, it says volumes about the solution. In this case about the tangro solution, which Hammerer Aluminium Industries, or HAI for short, is using to automatically process its incoming invoices. The software has made the invoice verification and release processes in SAP simpler, faster and more transparent. This optimisation measure has obviously gone down well amongst the staff. “Our vision was a paperless office. And with tangro we have achieved this goal in invoice processing,” says Franz Biereder, head of financial accounting at HAI. “tangro is being up-to-date and delivers the very benefits we had hoped it would.”
HAI, an aluminium specialist based in Upper Austria, employs over 1200 members of staff and achieved a turnover of around €500 million in 2018. The products of the HAI Group can be found in the construction sector, electrotechnology, machinery and plant construction and in automotive and transport technology. One prominent reference from the latter industry is the new railcar bodies of the Wuppertal overhead railway, which were produced by HAI. HAIs headquarters are in Ranshofen, where annually around 49,000 invoices are sent for processing in SAP – the majority of them arrive as PDFs and a few are still paper-based. One central e-mail address serves as the incoming point. The PDF documents are sent here directly and the paper invoices are scanned and then forwarded to this address.
For invoices with a purchase order reference, which account for around 80 percent of all invoice documents, recording, checking and posting in SAP is a fast process requiring virtually no manual intervention. The tangro software automatically recognises the content, compares it in real time with the master and transaction data in SAP and generates a parking document. After a quick check by the administrator, the invoice is posted at the touch of a button. In theory, these invoices could enter the payment run fully automatically, but to date the client has made the conscious decision to give them a final check first.
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IndustryAluminium production
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HeadquarterRanshofen
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SubjectIncoming invoices
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Volume of documents49,000 invoices/year

