Document Logistix helps Texas Department of Public Safety Finance to automate Accounts Payable

Digital document management, Accounts Payable centralized and automated

Using an agency wide 2020-21 biennial budget of $5.8 billion, the Texas Department of Public Safety Finance Division provides budget, accounting, cash receiving, expenditure, and payroll services. Austin is at the heart of the finance department for processing invoices throughout Texas from review to tracking and payments.

With transactions with more than 5,500 vendors, it was extremely challenging to track invoice status.

TXDPS Finance Department Business Challenges

The Finance Department at TXDPS decided to replace their payable invoice tracking systems with a single document management system. Historically they used a combination of paper, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft Outlook to process payable invoices, and tracked the status of each payable invoice manually. TXDPS processes about 2,500 invoices a month, and invoices were being missed or deleted, which cost TXDPS thousands of dollars in interest as prescribed by the Texas Prompt Payment Law.

In addition, the Accounts Payable team were spending a great deal of time manually entering invoice data and processing invoices. To complicate matters each payor had a different process for reviewing and approving vendor invoices. This unstructured process was difficult to operate, time-consuming and ultimately costly. Searching for invoices and associated correspondence was very difficult, which made queries and payment questions difficult to answer.

Finance Department Business Needs

To optimise productivity, Texas Department of Public Safety and Document Logistix experts worked together to review and evaluate business processes involving purchasing and Texas CPA CAPPS system. Automation proved to be the way forward, which included:

One system for all AP Payors in the Finance Department
Automated capture of payable invoices from emails and paper
Automated data entry with OCR and database lookups to autofill information
Automated assignment of each invoice to AP Payors
Automated sync of payment vouchers from TXCPA CAPPS Oracle system
Criminal Justice Information Security (CJIS) compliance

Document Logistix Solution for Finance ITS

Document Logistix provided a cloud-based Invoice Tracking Solution in Microsoft Azure Government that is CJIS compliant using our Document Logistix DM5 Web Content Management (ECM) services. Vendors submit invoices digitally to one email address which routes invoices automatically to our Batch Capture product, from where invoices are assigned to individual AP Payors. Workflow automation ensures that disputes and queries are handled appropriately. Dashboard reporting provides management a summary view across KPIs, incluing invoices for more than specified dollar amounts. This new ITS process for the Finance Department improved multiple aspects, including:

Reduced processing time
Reduced late payment interest
Improved productivity and team collaboration
Savings on software maintenance
Paperless premises, freeing valuable floor space
Greater information security and compliance

There are approximately 200 TXDPS users. In future, the finance department will open up the ITS solution to more than 5,500 vendors to enable them to self-verify invoice status and enable the Finance staff to focus on getting vendors paid.