University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust selects Cloud Invoicing from Advanced
Solution implemented ahead of new government e-invoicing directive designed to drive down NHS costs
University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust selects Cloud Invoicing from Advanced to process 50,000 invoices per year Solution implemented ahead of new government e-invoicing directive designed to drive down NHS costs
The University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust has implemented Cloud Invoicing, a hosted cloud management solution from Advanced Business Solutions as part of a service improvement and efficiency drive.
Over the next two to three years, the trust plans to use the system to process up to 50,000 invoices a year issued by 150 suppliers.
This will save an estimated 140 man hours per month, freeing up staff time for other key areas of work within the accounts payable team.
Leicester is the first NHS trust to implement Advanced’s Cloud Invoicing solution ahead of new European and government directives which will make it compulsory for all organisations to offer e-invoicing to suppliers as part of e-procurement measures to drive down costs. The directives are expected to come into force from 2015.
Cloud Invoicing is fully integrated with eFinancials from Advanced; a financial management system used by more than 80 NHS organisations. Suppliers use Cloud Invoicing to post invoices online and all information is automatically imported into eFinancials for approval by accounts payable staff. The need for invoices to be printed and scanned is eliminated, enabling the trust to achieve substantial time and cost savings as well as reduced paper and energy consumption.
Mick Cook, finance systems manager at the trust, said: “Our 30-day payment terms are based on the date the invoice is received, not when it was issued by the supplier. So, if an invoice is posted to us, this will naturally have an impact on when the supplier is subsequently paid.
“Invoices sent to us via the cloud are received and uploaded into our purchase ledger on the same day, so the supplier can be paid on a timelier basis and the trust can potentially benefit from early payment discounts. It’s still early days but we are encouraged by what we have seen so far.”
The trust also uses a number of other solutions provided by Advanced including Collaborative Planning, a web-based financial planning, budgeting and forecasting system, which integrates with all leading financial management systems.
Leicester’s financial management systems have been hosted by Advanced since February 2012 and migration to the cloud has reduced the need for the trust to manage and support its own infrastructure. Support is provided via a dedicated helpdesk and Advanced works to a stringent service level agreement guaranteeing system availability to users.
Cook said: “We have worked with Advanced for the past seven years and its solutions have been key to helping us improve efficiencies by automating time-consuming manual processes related to financial management.”
