Case Study

Rules Restaurant

Founded in 1798, Rules is proud to be London's oldest restaurant.  From their location in Covent Garden, the restaurant offers traditional British food, specialising in classic game cookery, oysters and pies, all served to diners in exquisite surroundings.

Rules has more than 100 staff serving up to 300 covers per day.  The restaurant has private dining rooms and an opulent cocktail bar providing customers with the perfect setting to finish their evening.

Paper Heavy

Prior to 2016, Rules' finance processes were very paper heavy with a lot of manual data entry required by the finance department.  Processing supplier invoices was time consuming and error prone and they wanted a solution for these problems.  In 2016 they implemented accounts payable software from a third-party provider to address the overuse and storage of paper, as well as to streamline their approval processes.

While the software should have solved a lot of problems for Rules, this unfortunately wasn't the case and they were left with ongoing headaches.

Rules Senior Finance Manager told us:

"We had no real communication or training from our previous solutions provider and whenever we logged a support ticket it took a long time to get an answer."

With the system they had, invoices and payroll information were being stored but employees didn't properly understand how to use it or the importance of document indexing. 

Rules finance staff were still manually entering invoice data into SAGE despite knowing there were solutions available to automate this data entry.  They were frustrated that despite having software in place, no real benefits were evident.

Luckily they were contacted by a member of DocTech's sales team who learnt about Rule's predicament and looked into a better solution for them.  Things improved dramatically with how the accounts payable processes were handled once DocTech had implemented the document management software, DocuWare.

After years of using a system that was under-utilised, DocTech met with Rules to fully understand their requirements and what they would be able to achieve using DocuWare.

"DocTech understood what we wanted straight away.  I thought it was going to need more explanation but it was clear DocTech were experienced when it came to accounts processes and how to get the best out of the DocuWare software."

Their old and disjointed process was radically improved with DocuWare sitting at the heart of it.

DocTech's Solution

When goods arrive on site, the deliveries are checked by staff against the paper delivery note.  Once confirmed, the delivery note and paper invoice are passed to finance. 

These paper documents are scanned, indexed and stored to DocuWare where key information such as supplier name, date, invoice number and price are captured. 

Any invoices that arrive by email are stored to DocuWare using the Connect to Outlook feature which can automatically pull information from inboxes straight into DocuWare.

Automated Document Checks

Once stored in DocuWare, the system checks for duplicates along with Net, VAT and Gross calculations.  DocuWare then exports the data to SAGE via a DocuWare integration, removing the need for manual data entry.  Rules commented that "the import into SAGE takes seconds".

DocuWare checks for nominal codes on invoices and based on these codes, routes them for approval.   Approval workflows allow users to sign off the invoices for payment or put them in query while they investigate any discrepancies.

All finance documents are securely stored in DocuWare.  This has created a digital archive that is easily accessible to those with authorised access, and enables documents to be found in seconds.

Rules no longer require physical storage space as all paper documents are shredded.  The time saved through streamlining the invoice process, which included eradicating the paper storage costs and removing manual data entry has saved them approximately £30,000 per year.  This equated to the annual salary of an Accounts Assistant they no longer need to hire.

The Difference Since Working With DocTech

Rules' Senior Finance Manager wanted to improve their finance processes but the lack of support from the previous supplier stopped him.  He told us that:

"Things are a lot different now, the operation has been streamlined completely.  The support is there immediately, when I've logged a support ticket, I've hardly turned away from the computer and someone has responded to help me."

DocTech ensure regular account management calls take place with all our clients to check everything is working as they need it to.  There is also regular investigation to check if there are further ways DocuWare can take the strain off their processes.

Rules chose a cloud document management system as they wanted to get away from using on-premise servers.  They have found the software really easy to use.  With access to DocuWare from anywhere with an internet connection, staff can complete work from home, meaning unnecessary travel to the office is removed.

Rules are now confident that all information is correct and there is no longer a requirement for extra checks on the accuracy of data entering SAGE.  They have "found every document they've ever searched for." As well as using the pre-defined index data, users can also make use of DocuWare's fulltext search functionality.