Client overview
The client is a firm of chartered surveyors managing a substantial portfolio of several hundred commercial and residential properties on behalf of landlords and investors across the UK. Their property management team is responsible for the day-to-day operations of each property, including handling the steady flow of supplier invoices that accompany maintenance, services, repairs, and compliance works across the portfolio.
With a portfolio of that scale, invoice volume is significant and constant. Every invoice carries implications not just for the client’s own accounts, but for the landlords whose service charges and expenditure the firm is accountable for managing – making accuracy, auditability, and timeliness business-critical rather than merely desirable.
The challenge
Before engaging Dajon, the client’s invoice handling process was almost entirely manual. Every invoice – whether received by post, delivered to site, or sent by email – ultimately had to be physically signed off by a director using pen and paper before it could be processed. Once authorised, the invoice data was then manually transcribed by the accounts team into Qube, the firm’s property management software.
This approach created several significant pain points:
- Bottlenecks at the top. With a single director responsible for signing off every invoice, approvals stalled whenever they were travelling, on-site, or otherwise unavailable. Paper simply could not follow them.
- Manual data entry. Keying invoice data into Qube by hand was slow, labour-intensive, and prone to transcription errors – errors that then had to be reconciled downstream.
- Lack of visibility. Property managers had no straightforward way to track where an invoice was in the approval process, making supplier queries time-consuming and often frustrating to resolve.
- A paper-based audit trail. Physical signatures and paper invoices made compliance, retrieval, and archiving cumbersome – a particular concern for a regulated business answerable to landlords and auditors.
- Office-bound working. Because authorisation depended on a physical signature and transcription happened at a desk with access to Qube, the process was effectively anchored to the office. Any move toward flexible or remote working was difficult to support.
- Scalability concerns. As the portfolio grew, the existing process simply could not keep pace with the volume of invoices flowing through the business without proportionate increases in headcount.
The solution
Dajon deployed DocuPhase, a comprehensive electronic document management (EDM) and workflow automation platform, hosted on the client’s own server for maximum control and data sovereignty. The deployment included two-way integration with Qube and a connection to the client’s single sign-on (SSO) provider, so users could access the system seamlessly using their existing corporate credentials – no additional passwords to manage, and no additional attack surface.
Deployment approach
The project ran from kickoff to go-live in around three to six months, following a structured phase of discovery, configuration, integration, and user acceptance testing. Because the workflow touched virtually every property manager, team leader, and the accounts function, Dajon and the client agreed on a “big bang” go-live rather than a phased rollout: once the system was ready, the entire team switched over at the same time. This avoided the complexity and risk of running two processes in parallel and gave the business the benefits of the new system from day one.
Training was delivered in the run-up to go-live, with role-specific sessions for property managers, team leaders, accounts staff, and directors. Tailored documentation and quick-reference guides were produced to support ongoing adoption, and Dajon’s team provided hands-on support during the initial weeks of live running to help the team bed in.
How the process works
The process was redesigned from end to end:
- Ingestion. Hardcopy invoices are scanned at the client’s offices and forwarded to a dedicated email inbox, alongside any invoices arriving electronically. DocuPhase automatically pulls documents from the inbox and from a designated watch folder, so nothing has to be manually uploaded.
- Intelligent data capture. The system uses OCR and data capture rules to extract key fields from each invoice – date, invoice number, supplier name, property address, net, VAT, and gross totals – as well as individual line items. The capture engine improves over time as it encounters more invoice formats from the client’s recurring suppliers.
- Database matching. Extracted supplier and property information is automatically matched against records pulled from Qube. This was one of the more technically involved parts of the project: property identifiers in the real world (addresses on invoices, supplier references, informal names) rarely match a database record cleanly, so matching logic was tuned to handle the variations and edge cases specific to the client’s portfolio.
- Routing to the right property manager. Each invoice enters a tailored workflow and is routed automatically to the property manager responsible for the matched property. Smart fields and dropdowns, populated live from Qube data, allow the property manager to review, correct, or enrich the captured data quickly and accurately – without ever having to leave the workflow to look something up.
- Multi-stage approval. The invoice progresses through a defined approval chain: property manager, team leader, accounts, and finally the director for authorisation. Every step is handled digitally, with a complete audit trail capturing who did what, when, and from where.
- Automatic posting. Once authorised, invoices are automatically pushed into Qube via the two-way integration, and a copy of the approved document is securely archived on a separate client server for long-term retention and easy retrieval.
Technical and integration considerations
The two-way Qube integration was a non-trivial piece of engineering. Invoices needed to arrive in Qube as correctly posted transactions, with supplier, property, nominal code, and line-item detail intact – while reference data flowing the other way (suppliers, properties, chart of accounts) needed to stay synchronised to keep the capture and matching steps accurate. Dajon worked closely with the client’s IT function to design, build, and test the integration, and to agree the operational model for keeping it healthy in production.
On-premises deployment, combined with SSO, was chosen deliberately. It kept sensitive financial documents within the client’s own security perimeter, satisfied internal IT governance requirements, and meant user provisioning and deprovisioning followed the same processes the business already trusted.
Results
The system now routinely processes 200 to 300 invoices per day, end to end, through the new automated workflow. The impact on the client’s operations has been substantial:
- Significantly increased capacity, no extra headcount. The business has been able to absorb growing invoice volumes and portfolio expansion without hiring additional staff to manage the workload – a direct, measurable return on the investment.
- Faster approvals. Digital routing removed the bottleneck caused by pen-on-paper sign-off, accelerating turnaround times and improving supplier relationships.
- Remote and flexible working enabled. Perhaps the most transformative change: property managers and directors can now review, correct, and approve invoices from anywhere, on any authorised device. Authorisation is no longer tied to being in the office with a pen, which has materially supported the firm’s move toward flexible and hybrid working.
- Reduced manual effort. Automated data capture and direct posting into Qube eliminated the need for manual transcription, freeing the accounts team to focus on higher-value activities such as reconciliation, reporting, and supplier management.
- Improved accuracy. Matching against Qube data at the point of capture, combined with smart fields during review, reduced errors and the downstream work they create.
- Full visibility and control. Property managers and directors can see exactly where any invoice sits in the process, respond quickly to supplier queries, and spot issues before they escalate.
- A robust, defensible audit trail. Every action – capture, edit, approval, posting – is logged automatically. For a regulated business answerable to landlords and auditors, the shift from paper sign-offs to a fully digital audit trail has been a significant uplift in compliance posture.
Why it worked
Several factors contributed to the success of this deployment:
- A tailored workflow. Rather than forcing the client into a generic template, Dajon mapped the workflow to the firm’s existing roles and approval hierarchy, ensuring rapid user adoption.
- Deep Qube integration. Two-way integration meant DocuPhase behaved as a natural extension of the tools the team already used, rather than yet another system to maintain.
- On-premises deployment with SSO. Hosting on the client’s own infrastructure, combined with single sign-on, addressed both security and usability from day one.
- End-to-end automation. By covering ingestion, capture, approval, and posting in a single platform, the solution eliminated the handoffs and re-keying that had plagued the previous process.
- Committed go-live. Switching the whole team over at once forced a clean break from the legacy process and prevented the “shadow paper trail” that can linger with phased rollouts.
Looking ahead
With invoice processing now running smoothly at scale, the client is well positioned to extend the same automation principles to other document-heavy processes – from lease documentation to compliance records – continuing to build on the efficiency, control, and flexibility the DocuPhase deployment has delivered.