State-of-the-art AI tech­no­logy for skilled trades and ancillary building trades

The industry solution pds Software fully covers all craft and business processes: from cal­cu­la­tions, digital purcha­sing, warehouse manage­ment, resource planning and the service and main­ten­ance business to mea­su­re­ment and billing and, if desired, with inte­grated finance and human resources.

The volume of incoming documents in the industry is con­siderable. Par­ti­cu­larly sub­stan­tial in number and page count are vendor invoices due to picking and multiple items. However, prompt pro­ces­sing of these documents is crucial for the speed of the company’s own invoicing: if the prices and quan­ti­ties of purchased materials are not recorded and checked, the billing of services to the customer cannot take place either. This is detri­mental to liquidity, and a delay in the payment of vendor invoices means that promising cash discounts are given away.

For automatic document reading, pds was therefore looking for a powerful software component to integrate into its own ERP solution and, after eva­lua­ting alter­na­tives, decided on smart INVOICE as the tech­no­lo­gi­cally leading product. PDS was therefore in search for a powerful software component for automatic document reading that could be inte­grated in their own ERP solution. After eva­lua­ting alter­na­tives they decided on the tech­no­lo­gi­cally leading product smart INVOICE.

Thanks to the inte­gra­tion of smart INVOICE, the data of incoming invoices no longer has to be entered manually. The solution auto­ma­ti­cally reads out invoice data such as vendor, invoice number and date, purchase order refe­rences, tax rates and totals as well as the indi­vi­dual item data and much more, and checks it for plau­si­bi­lity. In case of doubt, employees can validate or sup­ple­ment the auto­ma­ti­cally read data via color coding in an editing screen that is fully inte­grated into the pds software. The documents with the read data are then trans­ferred to the invoice receipt book for further pro­ces­sing. Optional dark pro­ces­sing enables fully automated posting and payment of invoices. In addition, smart INVOICE can receive, read and check elec­tronic invoices in all relevant formats – such as ZUGFeRD or X‑invoices in par­ti­cular.

Automated document reading opens the door to a complete digi­tiza­tion of the entire process – from ordering to payment. This makes the indi­vi­dual steps not only signi­fi­cantly more efficient, the pro­ces­sing stage of a tran­sac­tion is also trans­pa­rent at all times. The total time required to process vendor invoices is dra­sti­cally reduced. „By inte­gra­ting smart INVOICE into our pds software, our customers in the skilled trades and ancillary con­s­truc­tion trades benefit from state-of-the-art AI tech­no­logy at enter­prise level,“ says Jörg Bilz, Managing Director at pds GmbH.

Currently pds processes around 3 million invoices per year for its customers – some of them with con­siderable page counts – effi­ci­ently and largely auto­ma­ti­cally with smart INVOICE. The trend is strongly incre­asing. In the summer of 2023, the company plans to switch to the Insiders Cloud Service for smart INVOICE and will then benefit from even easier scaling, faster avai­la­bi­lity of technical inno­va­tions and always optimal con­fi­gu­ra­tion by the manu­fac­turer.