Improvement of invoice process for a dissimilar profit center of a large company
Sompio, Sami (2021)
Sompio, Sami
2021
All rights reserved. This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2021052010092
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2021052010092
Tiivistelmä
Customer invoicing is the lifeblood of every profit-oriented company. This thesis ap proached the process of customer invoicing from the perspective of a dissimilar profit cen tre of a large multinational company. Due to the dissimilar nature of the case company’s
profit center, some parts of the process were not working well. The author agreed to inves tigate this problem for the case company.
The main goal of this thesis has been to find out; how to improve the invoicing process for
a dissimilar profit centre? The author first proceeded to find out; what is the typical invoic ing process of a large multinational company? Next, they did research on; what is the cur rent process and efficiency of the invoice process of the dissimilar profit center? Based on
the results of the research, they worked on trying to find out; what are the possible im provements for the invoice process? The author had trouble finding data on typical invoic ing processes of companies of similar size and industry. There was not enough data avail able for comparison.
The author looked into some theory behind customer invoicing process. This included typi cal invoicing process of a company, and ways to measure a company’s invoicing process.
The measures chosen by the author were customer satisfaction and cost of invoicing.
Research methods chosen by the author were both qualitative and quantitative. For quali tative method, the author interviewed four stakeholders of the invoicing process. Three of
them were employees of the case company, and one of them was a key customer of the
dissimilar profit center. For quantitative methods, the author first decided to calculate total
cost per invoice. Next, they calculated the cost to sales ratio. To measure customer satis faction, the author calculated the amount of credit memos issued per accounting period.
The author found out that the invoicing costs per invoice were high but low compared to
monthly sales. This was due to low number of large monthly invoices. The amount of credit
memos issued per accounting period had been rising during the last three cycles. This
meant that the invoicing accuracy had been declining. However, this did not correlate to
declining customer satisfaction. Based on the customer interview, the author found out that
the customer had been pleased with the recent development of the process.
The most important finding that the author made, was the need for automation of the pro cess. All of the interviewees agreed that the process in its current state includes too much
manual work. The author recommends that the case company looks into possibilities of au tomating their invoicing process. Due to lack of available data on customer invoicing of
companies of similar size and structure, the author also recommends that in the future, the
case company either buys this data, or uses benchmarking by analysing their own invoic ing data from previous years.
profit center, some parts of the process were not working well. The author agreed to inves tigate this problem for the case company.
The main goal of this thesis has been to find out; how to improve the invoicing process for
a dissimilar profit centre? The author first proceeded to find out; what is the typical invoic ing process of a large multinational company? Next, they did research on; what is the cur rent process and efficiency of the invoice process of the dissimilar profit center? Based on
the results of the research, they worked on trying to find out; what are the possible im provements for the invoice process? The author had trouble finding data on typical invoic ing processes of companies of similar size and industry. There was not enough data avail able for comparison.
The author looked into some theory behind customer invoicing process. This included typi cal invoicing process of a company, and ways to measure a company’s invoicing process.
The measures chosen by the author were customer satisfaction and cost of invoicing.
Research methods chosen by the author were both qualitative and quantitative. For quali tative method, the author interviewed four stakeholders of the invoicing process. Three of
them were employees of the case company, and one of them was a key customer of the
dissimilar profit center. For quantitative methods, the author first decided to calculate total
cost per invoice. Next, they calculated the cost to sales ratio. To measure customer satis faction, the author calculated the amount of credit memos issued per accounting period.
The author found out that the invoicing costs per invoice were high but low compared to
monthly sales. This was due to low number of large monthly invoices. The amount of credit
memos issued per accounting period had been rising during the last three cycles. This
meant that the invoicing accuracy had been declining. However, this did not correlate to
declining customer satisfaction. Based on the customer interview, the author found out that
the customer had been pleased with the recent development of the process.
The most important finding that the author made, was the need for automation of the pro cess. All of the interviewees agreed that the process in its current state includes too much
manual work. The author recommends that the case company looks into possibilities of au tomating their invoicing process. Due to lack of available data on customer invoicing of
companies of similar size and structure, the author also recommends that in the future, the
case company either buys this data, or uses benchmarking by analysing their own invoic ing data from previous years.