Anyone who thinks of McDonald's probably thinks of fast food and not immediately of electronic invoices. But to get those burgers, fries and shakes to the table, the multinational needs a way to process over 270,000 purchase invoices annually in Germany.
In 2015, the company alone had 1,478 branches in Germany, employing a total of about 58,000 workers. McDonald's owes its success to its strict quality standards, which the company places not only on itself, but also on its 30,000 suppliers and service providers in Germany.
McDonald's runs 13 percent of its German locations itself; independent entrepreneurs manage the remaining locations. Among the impressive number of suppliers the burger giant contracts are numerous small businesses and microenterprises, such as horticultural companies and kitchenware manufacturers. Some 120 suppliers account for 85 percent of the total volume of incoming invoices at McDonald's Germany.
Although McDonald's has been automating invoices from larger suppliers in Germany for several years, it also needed a way to streamline invoices from the 29,880 remaining smaller companies - including micro-businesses - with whom the fast-food chain works.
By connecting these suppliers to the Basware Network, suppliers can continue to send their invoices in PDF format as they have always done. Basware Network reads the information from the pdf, both at header and line level, and checks VAT compliance with German VAT law. Basware Network then converts the file into a data file (xml) that is sent to McDonald's Germany. The invoice is then automatically submitted to budget holders for approval.
Realizing early payment discounts
From the moment suppliers send their PDF invoices to the network, the accounts payable department at McDonald's is able to process structured invoice data fully automatically, allowing invoices to then be sent to the appropriate cost center managers for approval without requiring manual intervention.
'Initial results have shown that it now takes only seven rather than 20 days to process invoices after they are received. This means McDonald's can take advantage of early payment discounts more often. This software has exceeded our expectations,' says Daniel Voigt, Senior Manager of Process Management, McDonald's Deutschland
So when you next visit McDonald's in Germany, think about all those suppliers who send 270,000 invoices every year and how effortlessly McDonald's accounts payable team processes these purchase invoices!
Source: Basware (October, 2018)
