When Jay Lyons, a long-time client and Finance Manager at Mississippi Market Natural Foods Co-op, mentioned the need for a better way to process payables for their three St. Paul, Minnesota stores, Business Automation Specialists of Minnesota (BASM) knew just the solution. Mississippi Markets’ accounting department processes 3000 payables per month, with many of the invoices being split between departments. They needed to increase accuracy, reduce errors and paperwork, while streamlining processes.
BASM quickly implemented Continia Document Capture software for digital payables which integrates seamlessly into Mississippi Market’s accounting solution, Microsoft Business Central. BASM was able to help Mississippi Market automate nearly all of their daily invoice document handling – from receiving and registering the payables, to posting and ultimately retrieving previously processed documents from the digital archive.
Melissa Reichenbacher, Director of Client Engagement, at BASM states, “We were able to get Mississippi Market up and running on Continia in just a few weeks. It’s so refined and well-integrated with Business Central that it is a very quick implementation. The Continia solution is ideal for a business like theirs that deals in a great volume of paperwork. It’s not only a good value and very easy to use, but it can be a huge time saver.”
“COVID really emphasized the value of having access to the electronic files and not having to physically handle invoices. We are now pretty much able to process invoices remotely after they are scanned.“
Jay Lyons, Finance Manager at Mississippi Market Natural Foods Co-op
The importance of taking advantage of electronic storage of invoices, which are directly connected to payables in their Business Central system, became particularly apparent during the COVID-19 shut down. Jay stated, “COVID really emphasized the value of having access to the electronic files and not having to physically handle invoices. We are now pretty much able to process invoices remotely after they are scanned.”
Jay added, “Continia is very intuitive, super slick, and will have a huge payoff for us the longer we use it. We are already seeing the benefits of moving to a paperless accounting office and it’s pretty exciting! The time savings will be most noticeable by not having manual data entry errors. Additionally, having the ability to grab a big stack of invoices and not have to sort alphabetically, then sort by store and all the other paper handling that we do, it’s more than just time savings – it’s automatically entering an invoice and taking away all of the paper shuffling.”
“We were able to get Mississippi Market up and running on Continia in just a few weeks. It’s so refined and well-integrated with Business Central that it is a very quick implementation. The Continia solution is ideal for a business like theirs that deals in a great volume of paperwork. It’s not only a good value and very easy to use, but it can be a huge time saver.“
Melissa Reichenbacher, Director of Client Engagement, at BASM
Jay noted that prior to Continia, all the different departments, for all three stores, would collect all their invoices, put them in an envelope and use a courier to send to a central location. There they were sorted, processed, filed, checks printed, and those were then sorted. Each invoice was handled five times just to get the check cut. Now the payable is scanned, which automatically enters the transaction and saves the invoice into the digital-file archive. The paper copy isn’t needed anymore. He states, “That’s where I’m excited about the time savings; Continia eliminates a ton of unnecessary steps.”
Jay concluded, “I’ve been working in food co-op world a long time and I’m not aware of any of the food co-ops locally doing anything close to this level of automation. The advantages of digital payables are pretty awesome. There are so many positive ramifications overall and we love how simple it is. We’re very pleased with Continia. It’s really going to make a difference in our efficiency. In fact, because it’s working so well, we are revamping our procedures to eliminate most of the manual sorting and filing we’ve always done and just go with NAV as the method for accessing A/P documents. We can’t thank BASM enough for helping us get it implemented so quickly.”
Mississippi Market needed to increase accuracy, reduce errors
and paperwork, while streamlining processes.
More on Continia Automated data capture
Continia Document Capture is the best and most comprehensive end-to-end add-on solution for Microsoft Dynamics Business Central or NAV that scans, extracts OCR-data, registers, posts, and archives all types of documents with full-text search capability.
PDF files are automatically downloaded from predefined email addresses and processed using award-winning OCR technology – with no user involvement at all. Paper documents are scanned using a desktop or network scanner and follow the same flow as PDF files.
All relevant information on documents is automatically transferred to the corresponding fields in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central or NAV, making it fast and efficient to register incoming documents.
Invoices in XML-format already contain all the necessary information and do not require OCR processing – you can simply import these using Continia XML-Import.
Invoice processing and management
Continia Document Capture streamlines processing and managing purchase invoices with a wide range of new features such as automated vendor detection, documents overview, inward registration and much more.
Using 3-way matching, invoices can be matched automatically to existing purchase orders or receipts, as well as approved and posted, if amounts are within predefined thresholds.
Approval workflows for everyone
Approving invoices can be done either directly in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central or NAV or online using a web browser – enabling everyone in the organization to access the approval workflow. Approvers can see the original invoice on the screen and either accept, reject, place it on hold, or forward it to another person for review or approval. Comments and attachments can easily be added too.
With Continia Web Approval Portal, even employees with no direct access to Microsoft Dynamics Business Central or NAV gain the same opportunities to approve invoices and other documents. No matter where the employee is located, all that is required for accessing and approving documents is internet access.
Access documents from anywhere
The digital archive in Continia Document Capture contains all PDF files and scanned documents, which can easily be accessed from relevant places in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central or NAV.
You can open the original PDF invoice from the posted invoice card or general ledger entry screen in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central or NAV.
The digital archive is fully indexed which means you can search for any text on documents, even if the information has not been transferred to a field in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central or NAV. This makes it possible to search for a specific reference number, serial number or any other information on purchase invoices and other documents.
Learn More About Continia and their Document Capture’s intelligent OCR.