The benefit of the individual software for the TÜV Süd is to minimize the costs of accounts payable settlement.

The use case can be described as follows.

Standard procedure for services purchased

The standard procedure for “service provider charges his services, customer pays bill“, entails some costly tasks.

• The service provider writes an invoice for his rendered services.
  
• Missing order confirmations or verbal agreements can lead to disputable items.
  
• The customer in turn checks and records the incoming invoice.
  
• Both sides have to allocate the items to accounts and in case of collective billing, where necessary, to compartmentalize.
  
• Disputable items can lead to the situation that complete invoices are not paid.
  

The basis of the automated credit memo procedure

With the automated credit memo procedure, the invoicing is moved to the customer. The customer has the invoicing for services rendered in this hand and initiates it himself.

Accounting-wise this happens in form of a credit memo of the customer. Hence this credit memo replaces for invoicing purposes the invoice of the service provider (§14 sec. 2 sent. 3 UStG (German Turnover Tax Law).

Core benefit of the automated credit memo procedure

Both sides save the trouble of invoice allocation and control. The service provider saves the trouble of invoicing and downsizes his accounts receivable department.

The customer saves on checking the invoice receipts and the allocation to the corresponding transaction and downsizes his accounts payable department. Auditing the accounts results in considerably less price deviation.

The automated credit memo procedure is only as good as the system behind it

Typically, a strong relationship of mutual trust between service provider and customer is necessary since the process authority passes over to the customer.

When introducing an automated credit memo procedure, it is necessary that the individual processes of order processing and invoicing between customer and service provider are taken into consideration and are mapped in the system in conformity with the law.

In the ideal case the upstream and downstream systems of both parties are linked with the credit memo system over interfaces. In this way, the maximum efficiency is achieved and double or redundant work steps are reduced or even totally removed. 

No rule without exception

In daily order processing processes such as order cancellations, changes of order contents, extension of order, etc. are taking place. These cases are processed in the used system.

Every change of an order takes place in the system and is unchangeably stored. These changes can be viewed by service provider and customer. Consequently, every order with its entire history remains transparent and comprehensible for both sides.

Accordingly, controversial points of single positions are avoided from the start.

As a result, further controls become redundant and the complete invoicing process becomes considerably more efficient. On both sides the system allocates the transactions (orders resp. order positions) automatically to the previously determined cost centers.

A manual allocation is not necessary anymore.

The overview for all orders in the system is available for the customer and the service provider. Extensive sorting and filtering possibilities provide the necessary overview and give every user exactly the view needed for his task.

Open orders, processing status, received and outstanding credit memos can always be seen live.