Billing automation case study
90% less time generating invoices
The company provided storage and logistics services for interior designers, home stagers and marketing agencies, handling their goods from receiving and inspection through storage, delivery and returns.
To bill a customer, finance first had to establish what had happened. That meant gathering project logs, checking storage usage and labour, finding shipping quotes and asking colleagues about credits or extra work.
As the range of services expanded, this put a substantial reconciliation job between completing the work and sending the invoice. The invoicing project brought operational records, billing rules and finance review into one process, connected to Xero.
Time spent generating invoices fell by 90%.
Billing required manual reconciliation
A customer might want promotional kits assembled and delivered to an event. Fulfilling that request could involve retrieving stored goods, assembly, packing and transport. Those activities needed to be recorded and charged under the right customer and billing arrangement.
Staff cross-checked delivery and pickup orders against project logs, then created and merged invoices for different charge categories. A discrepancy with the previous month's bill could send them back to colleagues for an explanation.
The difficulty went beyond calculating a price. Finance needed to know which work belonged on the bill and how the charges should be presented to the customer.
Charges calculated from operational records
The system generated charges from the warehouse platform's account, order and storage records. Configurable rules applied rates for storage, handling, travel and on-site work.
This put the calculation next to the information needed to check it. Finance could examine the charges for a customer, see the underlying work and review the details before creating the invoice.
Customer billing arrangements also mattered. An agency could need separate invoices for different accounts or projects, even when the work belonged to one customer relationship. Account relationships and billing settings controlled how the generated charges were grouped.
Finance reviewed charges before invoicing
Commercial work includes exceptions: a credit, a negotiated discount or a charge that needs correction. The workflow kept those decisions with finance. Staff could adjust quantities, prices and discounts, with a record of who changed them and when.
They then selected the charges to send to Xero. The system created the invoices, linked them back to their underlying charges and brought invoice-status changes back from accounting.
Xero remained the accounting system. The new application handled the work needed to turn operational activity into a bill finance could inspect and explain.
Better billing required better warehouse data
Automation still depended on what the operation recorded. Missing item locations or incomplete order details could leave finance without the basis for a charge. Improving receiving, inventory and order records therefore remained part of the billing work.
Some categories, including cancellation fees and miscellaneous charges, still required manual handling. The system automated repeatable calculations and invoice creation while preserving review and adjustments for the people responsible for the bill.