Thanet District Council Saves 12 Hours a Week Using COA Solutions' Invoice Data Capture Solution

Thanet District Council has improved purchase-to-pay efficiency by implementing an intelligent data capture solution from COA Solutions (www.coasolutions.com). This data capture solution, which is tightly integrated into the Council’s COA Solutions financial management system (FMS), has cut invoice processing time by 12 hours each week including reducing manual data entry of invoice information.

Thanet District Council required an invoice data capture solution to speed-up the processing of 17,500 invoices each year. Ginny Bax, Finance Manager at Thanet District Council, explains, “Our previous data entry process was very manually intensive.  The departure of a part-time staff member placed additional pressure on us to maximise efficiency in order to prevent unnecessary disruption to the finance department.”

Bax continues, “The data capture solution’s ability to integrate into our COA Solutions finance system was key and we were confident that it would enable us to recover the working hours we were going to lose from the departure of the part-time member of staff.”

COA Solutions’ intelligent data capture system, which uses Version One’s technology, automatically captures and verifies data from scanned purchase invoices using advanced optical character recognition (OCR) technology. Any data discrepancies are automatically highlighted for the attention of the user before being uploaded to COA Solutions’ FMS accounts payable module.

Bax comments, “The integration of COA Solutions’ data capture solution into our finance system has saved the equivalent of 12 hours of staff time per week, reducing manual data entry whilst significantly improving invoice processing efficiency. We expect to save even more staff time moving forward.” 

About Thanet District Council www.thanet.gov.uk
Thanet District Council is situated on the North Kent coast and serves approximately 129,200 citizens. The district contains urban and rural areas, dominated by over 42 kilometres of coastline with 14 beaches providing leisure use for visitors and residents.
Thanet District Council is responsible for providing clear leadership to the community and to continuously improve the delivery of local services. These services include: leisure, environmental, health, housing – including the provision of social housing and housing benefit - and rubbish collection.

About COA Solutions www.coasolutions.com 
COA Solutions is the UK's leading supplier of integrated business management and information systems to public, private and not-for-profit organisations in the service sector. COA Solutions prides itself on getting close to its customers by understanding their businesses and responding to their business needs.

COA Solutions' award-winning Smart Business Suite combines core financial management, procurement, human resource and payroll systems, integrated with a range of collaborative, document management and business intelligence solutions. COA Solutions also provides managed service and bureau service options. Its systems and services extend the value and effectiveness of the finance, HR and payroll departments across the organisation and enable managers in the business to monitor, analyse and continually improve corporate performance.

COA Solutions has more than 500 experienced and professional staff supporting and servicing over 4,000 clients across the UK service sector including Companies House, Newcastle City Council, WHSmith, Royal Bank of Scotland, Aer Lingus, National Express Group, DFS, RSPB and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust.
COA Solutions is an Advanced Computer Software Plc group company.

Contacts:
Liz Ebbrell, COA Solutions
Liz.ebbrell@coasolutions.com
+44(0)1625 856505 or 07917 634 705
 
Ben Carey, COA Solutions
Ben.carey@coasolutions.com
+44 (0)1625 856505