New Look restyles invoice management

Fast fashion retailer New Look has implemented an electronic invoice solution to cut down on the purchasing paper trail.

The retailer has signed a three-year deal with document management specialist P2D to host the systems it will use to circulate invoices, orders and balance statements to those people who need to authorise them.

The cost of the service is up to 45p per invoice, with a minimum of 60,000 invoices per year being processed.

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The strategy has been driven by New Look's increasing growth over the last few years, both in the UK and in Europe and the Middle East, resulting in much higher volumes of invoicing information being sent to the headquarters for authorisation.

New Look senior financial services systems analyst Simon Boyne-Manchee said: "New Look doesn't operate a purchase order system, so invoices are instrumental in the authorisation process, which was becoming increasingly difficult to manage."

The retailer dismissed the idea of using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), a standardised way of sending and receiving documents, because the cost was prohibitive for many of its suppliers.

The P2D solution allows suppliers to send invoices to New Look electronically at below 20 per cent of the cost of submitting a paper version. Suppliers that are unable to do this can send in paper invoices which are scanned into the electronic system by New Look central office staff.

New Look handles around 70,000 invoices per year and it expects to scan in 14,000 of those itself. One hundred twenty New Look suppliers are already using the system, with 300 scheduled to be on board within six months.

Boyne-Manchee said: "We now have complete visibility of all our invoices during the authorisation process. Now we are getting purchasing information electronically, the image of what we are buying in is a lot clearer. Before, we were just getting summary information being keyed in."