Automating invoice receipt and reconciliation at Canarian Hospitality with Suitech and Voxel

5
establishments

Vacation
hotels

Innovation and
sustainability

The starting point

Canarian Hospitality is a hotel management company founded in 2021 with a clear focus on innovation and sustainability. It currently has five hotels, with a plan to add five more over the next five years.

Although it had a clear intention to go digital, during the first year the hotel management company handled all its supply chain processes manually. In doing so, they found that there were suppliers who did not send invoices on time and some who did not even send them at all, with the setbacks this could cause for the accounting and payment teams.

Sangeeta Sagrani, CFO of Canarian Hospitality, realized that in order to be efficient and scalable they needed to automate the process of receiving invoices. Moreover, “when electronic invoicing becomes mandatory in Spain, we will be ahead of the curve and be already prepared,” she thought.

With this scenario in mind, the hotel management company decided to look for a solution that would best meet its needs for control and automation of its administrative processes.

In order to be efficient and scalable they needed to automate the process of receiving invoices.

Hotels managed by Canarian Hospitality have digitized the
receipt, validation and reconciliation of invoices with Voxel and Suitech.

The solution

Therefore, it decided to rely on Suitech, ERP based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and integrated with Voxel’s Bavel Billing solution to automate the process of receiving, validating and reconciling invoices with its suppliers.

The project started with a pilot supplier that generated a high volume of invoices and that was already using Voxel’s technology and Suitech’s management system. Subsequently, and thanks to the extensive network of companies integrated into Voxel’s Bavel platform, most of Canarian Hospitality’s suppliers were already integrated and could quickly start working with the hotel management company.

The next step was to identify the suppliers’ product references and synchronize them with Suitech ERP. This process was accompanied by training for Canarian Hospitality’s purchasing teams, which was essential for error‐free product coding and subsequent invoice reconciliation.

Once these procedures are completed, the result is an automated workflow that begins with the receipt of invoices through Bavel Billing and continues with a thorough reconciliation in Suitech ERP to verify accuracy in terms of quantities, products and agreed prices.

In cases where the reconciliation is successful, the invoice is automatically entered into the accounts, optimizing the bookkeeping process. But if the reconciliation does not meet the established criteria, Suitech ERP provides the ability to make informed decisions. This includes the option to accept or reject the invoice after further review, with the ability to transparently communicate the decision to the supplier.

The outcome

Canarian Hospitality has been able to digitize the relationship with 80% of its suppliers, gaining greater control over its administrative processes and minimizing the possible discrepancies resulting from manual intervention.

Since the implementation of the project, Canarian has automatically processed more than 3,200 invoices. In this sense, “today, Canarian Hospitality needs only one person in the accounting department (instead of the usual three) for each of its hotels, with a turnover of between 8 and 12 million euros per establishment,” says Sangeeta Sagrani.

In addition, she emphasizes that the relationship with their suppliers is very good because they can guarantee payment within 30 days. This helps them get the freshest product on the market and excellent service.

Javier Retornano, CEO of Suitech, adds what has been one of the key elements of the project’s success: “Suitech and Voxel’s Bavel Billing were integrated as a single product with two different technology layers and worked together as one team.”

After good results and in a phase of expansion, Voxel and Suitech have become Canarian Hospitality’s digitization partner for each new opening.