How Northwind Analytics cut invoice approval from nine days to two

Company Overview

Northwind Analytics processes around 1,400 supplier invoices a month. Approvals travelled by email between three departments, and nobody could say where an invoice was without asking.

Challenge

• Approvals moved by email, so an invoice waiting on someone who was away could sit untouched for a week
• There was no single place to see where an invoice stood, so finance chased status by hand every morning
• Late payments cost Northwind Analytics early settlement discounts and strained two supplier relationships
• Month end close slipped because invoices reached finance in the last three days of the month

Solution

• Brightpath Flow routes each invoice to the right budget owner based on cost centre and amount
• Approvals reassign automatically when someone is out of office, so nothing stalls on one person
• Reminders fire at 24 and 72 hours, then escalate to the department head
• Every invoice has its own status page, which ended the morning chase entirely

Results

• Average approval time fell from nine days to two
• Late payment charges dropped to zero across two quarters
• Northwind Analytics recovered roughly 18,000 euros a year in early settlement discounts
• Finance stopped spending the first hour of every day on status chasing

Customer Testimonial

"We were not shopping for an automation platform, we wanted to stop chasing people. Brightpath Software gave us that in an afternoon. The part I did not expect was the audit trail. When our auditors asked how approvals work, I sent them one link and that was the end of the conversation."

Ada Chen, VP of Operations, Northwind Analytics

Key Benefits

• Invoices routed automatically by cost centre and amount
• No single approver can hold up a payment
• Complete, exportable audit trail on every invoice
• Finance time returned to actual finance work

By replacing email approvals with a routed workflow, Brightpath Software turned a nine day process into a two day one without adding a single person.