Project Description
Discovery Parks
Industry:
RECREATION & TRAVEL
Accounting Software:
SAP
Discovery Parks saved more than $500,000 in costs with CAAPS’ automated AP solution.
The Challenge
Each of the 31 Discovery Holiday Parks received invoices from their suppliers. They processed them manually before mailing or faxing them back to head office. So invoices were often lost or couldn’t be tracked. The process was highly inefficient; accounts payable staff at head office having systematically to log and to process all emailed, faxed and mailed copies.
The Solution
Acumen Data developed a tailor-made solution for Discovery Parks. This involved our Complete Automated Accounts Payable Solution (CAAPS). CAAPS reads and interprets every faxed, scanned and emailed invoice from each park and processes them through the IT system.
The program only alerts Discovery Parks when there are exceptions. This greatly reducies processing time, errors and cost. Acumen Data set up around 30 business rules for different regional managers and different properties, including rules around capex vs opex, and who has authorisation to approve which expenses.
The Result
With the help of CAAPS, Discovery Parks has consolidated the accounts payable process from 31 individual businesses into one online solution. This has saved around $500,000 in account processing since the organisation started using CAAPS in 2008.
“We have reduced our administrative team by five full-time employees and we save considerable amounts on postage since we don’t have to buy and send 40 Express Post bags per week,” said Mrs Jarrett, Discovery Holiday Parks’ Chief Financial Officer.
“The system reads embedded business rules, processing items such as the Australian Business Number and filing it by category. For example a laundry invoice would go to housekeeping. All of this saves time – it’s only when there’s an anomaly that the system alerts us, instead of having to check every invoice manually.”