The Challenge
Large companies can receive tens or hundreds of commercial documents on a daily basis, which leads to an increasing need of document management in order to avoid loss and misfiling. The traditional way of scanning hard copies and archiving digital data has several limitations and usually creates complications for companies and employees. For example, when an invoice is received, it must be scanned and associated with an existing ERP or accounting system entry. As a result, access may be limited for users outside of Accounting, including the people who approved the invoice as well as auditors who need to search all the invoices received in a given month.
Physical archiving is another issue to be dealt with, as hard copies are difficult to organize or search, and very easy to lose or misfile. Usually, there is no coherent way of classifying the documents, thus leading to mistakes.
The Solution
Astris DM is a full featured Document Management software offering scanning, archiving and search, business process management, and global search features. It is available both as a web application and inside MS Outlook and it works for two types of invoice reception process.
The first type includes immediate registration of each document at the organization’s accounting software, which could be any accounting software or ERP. When the document is registered in accounting, a unique document ID is produced. Astris Integration Client turns it into a barcode, which is then printed and stuck on the hard copy. The invoices are consequently batch scanned and automatically split based on barcode. Τhe scanned document can be viewed from the Accounting software when searching for the specific entry, but users outside of accounting can also access the document using specific filters and criteria within Astris DM, always ensuring full access control and audit trail.
The second type of invoice reception process includes document approval before registration in the Accounting software. In this case, Metadocs suggest a workflow with the following steps:
After the documents are received, they are registered in Astris DM using only their basic details. Consequently, a special printer prints the registration number (barcode) and the documents are batch scanned. The hard copies are then archived, although realistically they are no longer needed.
Meanwhile, the digital documents are checked and tagged, and they can be linked to other documents inside the system (e.g. in case of credit notes) before they are archived. If the invoice has to be approved, an approval workflow is initiated and the document is sent to the appropriate recipients to review the indexing information. Throughout the process, monitoring is applied and users can exchange comments and task assignments. The workflow is mostly automated, but there is a feature for handling exceptional cases.
Interesting facts
- Hundreds of invoices are handled daily using Astris DM
- Over 85.000 invoices of a particular MetaDocs client are already archived
- 0% of invoices are lost