Cohen: How to Fully Automate Invoice Processing and Free Up the Time of Two Full-Time Employees

Client:

Cohen & Company offers a full range of accounting, tax, and consulting services to clients based in the U.S. and abroad. The company focuses on working with private companies, the investment industry, the real estate sector, and private equity.

The Challenge: 

The client came to us with a clear vision of which processes should be automated with RPA. They were:

1. Invoice creation and upload  
2. Invoice data extraction and upload  
3. Purchase order data creation and upload

Prior to the collaboration (and despite their relevance to the business), all three were heavily reliant on manual work, causing stress among employees, with the constant threat of delivering errors. 

The Solution: 

First, we advised on the automation technology. We decided to go with UiPath – an industry-standard solution that is secure, fast, and allows quick implementation (our UiPath developers are ready to automate your business processes right now).

As there were different processes to be optimized, let’s consider them separately. For the invoice processing the solution designed was based on two robots:

• the first was in charge of creating the PDF invoice based on the respective business rules.
• the second, with the recently created invoice, was able to import this invoice file with the correct parameters at the desired system.   

After correctly extracting the data from the invoice received in a specified mailbox, the bot was configured to insert this data into the specified system.  

The same logic was used for the purchase order data creation.

The Outcome:

Based on the time that was needed to manually deliver the tasks, the time saved monthly is the equivalent of two FTEs (two full-time employees). It means that we saved 320 hours monthly! 

Now, instead of manual document processing of every invoice, operators only need to analyze a report to check the few cases where the process was not fully completed to make sure the necessary actions are taken. Thanks to that they can now focus on more strategic tasks and bring more business value to the company.