With RAD Hotel Group rapidly growing with the acquisition of another two hotels, the group was struggling with a lack of storage for all purchase ledger invoices and filing. Also, the time, cost and manpower to locate various invoices and information when required for management and auditors was having a negative impact on the Purchase Ledger productivity, leading the company to start looking for a software that would allow them to sort these problems for them whilst ensuring a seamless integration with their Sage 200 Accounting Package.

“Amazing, cannot believe I have never heard of PaperLess everyone needs to get their hands on this program.”

Sharon Harkins Office Manager RAD Hotel Group

Being an SME the cost and value for money was an important factor when choosing the solution to be implemented. At the same time, with 6 different hotels the software would need to be able to keep information separate but at the same time easy to record, store and find when required.

Paperless allowed for all of these factors and has delivered more than what RAD thought possible. From the moment of implementation, the company managed to vastly reduce the physical paperwork in the office and manage to locate any invoice in seconds.

Take a look at the video for a sneak-peek of PaperLess for Sage 200

Let us then have a quick talk with Jade Hutson, Management Accountant at RAD Hotel Group, to find out more about the main changes introduced by the implementation of PaperLess Document Management Software.

What were the distinctive factors that lead to the implementation of PaperLess Software by RAD Hotel Group?

One of the key aspects was the fact that being Sage Certified Software and being fully integrated with Sage 200, Paperless was able to provide a hassle-free change over with no worries over lost information, minimal downtime during transition and minimal setup before usage. This was not apparent with other providers as well as the aftercare and support after installation, which was another stand out component of Paperless.

Was the transition as smooth as RAD had hoped for, could you tell us a bit more about that?

The implementation of Paperless was impressive. The first morning was spent in a meeting seeing a practical overview and discussing how the package would work and then the remainder of that day was spent using the software at our desks and in real time.

This was invaluable as we could ask the person responsible for training real time questions, address any queries as they came up. This made it easy for the trainer to show us what to do, explain the features of Paperless, understand how we worked and guide us on what features of Paperless we would benefit from.

What were the main benefits brought to RAD Hotel Group by implementing PaperLess Software?

The fact that PaperLess can recognize supplier invoices and pick up all relevant accounting data using the Automatic Invoice Recognition function allows us to almost fully automate the invoice processing functionality. Even though checks on invoice totals and VAT amounts are still carried out before posting to Sage, with PaperLess we have managed to almost eliminate time spent on manual data inputting data into Sage.

Besides the automation and reduction of time spend on manual data input, the other biggest benefit is efficiency, not only in processing the invoices each month for payment but on document retrieval for whoever needs it.

“…there isn’t anything it cannot do. Paperless have literally thought of everything.”

Jade Hutson, Management Accountant at RAD Hotel Group

The system is very user friendly and logical to use, making it very fast to obtain information through PaperLess. The ease of searching for information through various categories eg nominal, supplier name, amount that are inputted when processing invoices makes it possible to locate any invoice in seconds.

Also, important to mention the benefits achieved with the implementation of PaperLess Company Inbox, which enables suppliers to email invoices directly into the system. This allows us to have the peace of mind that invoices sent by suppliers will be automatically processed by PaperLess and all that is left is to review the accounting data, eliminating any delays in payment or possibilities of invoices being missed.

All this being said, it is important to mention that as time has gone on, we are still learning additional features of the product that are helping us to work in a more efficient way.

Have the benefits achieved translated into effective savings for RAD Hotel Group?

Yes, definitely. Paperless has enabled a 40% weekly productivity increase, saving us around 2 hours per day on time that usually would be spent on coding, processing and manually filing invoices. The savings achieved by using PaperLess include labor costs such as coding, processing, filing and locating invoices for analysis and auditing.

Overall, we estimate an average saving of 12 hours a month – 144 hours per year – saved on an annual basis per purchase ledger clerk. If to this value we add the savings experienced by other staff in the finance department, who can retrieve any documents by simply searching on the paperless archive function we would be talking of £2,000 just in direct savings achieved within the Finance Department.

Do you have any specific example that would allow us to better understand how PaperLess made life easier to other members of your company outside the Finance Department?

Yes, sure. A specific case would be a director looking to see what was paid for a specific piece of equipment 8 months ago. Simply by searching for the supplier, date range and cost code PaperLess will focus on these search criteria and show the invoices that match the defined criteria.

This process literally takes seconds which you cannot compare on the time previously spent on having to go through batches of paper invoices, locating the invoice, scanning it to send it on email and, after all that, having to file the invoice again in the paper archive. With PaperLess no more time is spent doing this.

How important is PaperLess Software in RAD business strategy?

In a business that is ever changing and growing, where archiving space and storage is limited, PaperLess allows this to be one less problem. We can now grow in number of companies and documents processed without having to worry about keeping our accounts organised since PaperLess automatically does that for us.

Organisation is key for any company who wants to grow and the ability to search and locate any information relating to costs, suppliers, contacts and trade history at the click of a button whilst being environmentally friendly with little or no printing are also important elements in our business strategy.

For more information contact us:

Email: info@paperlesseurope.com

Website: www.paperlesseurope.com

Phone: +44 (0) 207 135 2007