- Mansley Group enjoy an exceptional experience using Invu Verify, saving the Finance Team valuable time and lowering stress levels -

Mansley Group, known for its luxury serviced apartments in London, Edinburgh, Inverness and Cheltenham, has been the beneficiary of its own exceptional experience as it redesigned its invoice approval process. 

Using Invu Verify, a cloud-based automated accounts payable system from Invu, Mansley Group has removed the need for supplier invoices to be distributed far and wide across the UK, cutting the invoice approval process down from three weeks.

Before implementing Invu Verify, Mansley Group had a huge logistical challenge getting an invoice approved. Approvers were based across multiple locations and required invoices to be scanned and sent for approval. Due to this, Mansley Group only operated a one-step approval process, as it was too time-consuming to send the invoice to multiple approvers. 

To improve this outdated method of invoice approval, it was crucial that Mansley Group found a solution that provided better control and visibility over invoice processing with a complete audit trail and supported a multi-tiered approval process.

Colin Stone, Group Chief Operating Officer at Mansley Group noted, “We did not find any other software that gave us the advantages that Invu Verify has. I had a vision in my mind of what I wanted and Invu Verify fitted that requirement perfectly.”

By implementing Invu Verify, the Mansley Group now has a multi-tiered invoice approval process, allowing staff to approve invoices much faster from their respective offices.

Targeted at users of Sage 50 and 200, Invu Verify shifts the work away from mundane tasks like data entry and posting invoices, towards value-added activities like dealing with exceptions, exercising controls over expenditure and maintenance of supplier relationships.  

Stone continues, “Getting invoices approved by approvers based across different locations has only been made possible by Invu Verify. The speed of making payments has improved significantly as well as the accuracy. We have fewer missing invoices and the data input is of a higher degree of accuracy because of the automatic capture of invoice details.”

A distributed and slow invoice approval process often results in late payments to key suppliers, having a detrimental effect on supplier relationships. This is proven to be the case in a recently commissioned independent research project that showed almost a quarter of UK finance decision-makers (23%) say that it currently takes over 10 working days to process supplier invoices, with 29% of these saying it takes more than 20 working days. 

Ian Smith, GM and Finance Director at Invu, said: “In many businesses today, teams are often spread across multiple locations, or even working remotely from home, increasing the risk of fraud and error. To combat this, businesses need improved visibility of where the invoice sits in the process, better control over approval processes to ensure invoices are consistently sent to the right people for approval, and identity management, to make certain that the person signing it off is authorised to do so.”

Finance departments across the UK are ready to embrace automated accounting processes. Research has shown that 44% of finance workers think that automating processes would make them more productive, with one in five (22%) claiming they would welcome automation in their business.

Smith concludes, “With Invu Verify, those responsible for expenditure budgets can be certain that they have control over what is charged to their budgets as it is approved only by themselves or their chosen delegates.”