Incoming invoices: where does each one belong?

Every month a body and paint shop receives a large number of incoming invoices. The rental company bills rental days, the PDR technician bills several cars on one invoice, the partner shop bills painted parts, and the parts dealer bills spare parts for a job as well as workshop supplies for the location. Each of these invoices belongs somewhere else: to a job, to a location, to a cost type and to a bookkeeping account.

Without help from the software, that is manual work. Accounts staff type in invoice data, look for the right job, check lines against the order and look up the account. Or the invoice ends up in overheads as a whole, and nobody knows whether a job was profitable.

Car Repair Flow is the software body and paint shops use to run their repair jobs. Incoming invoices are not a separate accounting island in it. They land where the shop’s jobs, orders and rental cars already are. In the end every invoice sits on the right job and location, the account is suggested, and approval lies with the people responsible.

The AI reads the whole invoice

Incoming invoices arrive in Car Repair Flow by email. The AI recognises what kind of document it is and reads it in full: the supplier with VAT number and bank details, invoice number, date, due date, the VAT per rate, and every line with its description, part number, quantity and amount.

We read more than header data and totals. We also read the details a workshop works with: number plate and VIN, per line where needed, claim number, order and delivery note numbers, and on rental invoices the rental and billing period. Car Repair Flow recognises known suppliers, never takes over changed bank details silently, and flags possible duplicates.

At the same time, Car Repair Flow checks every invoice formally and for tax: whether the mandatory details are complete, the amounts add up and the VAT rates fit. For spare parts it shows, line by line, what was ordered, delivered, credited and invoiced.

Every line finds its job

Car Repair Flow assigns the invoice to the right job by VIN, number plate and claim number. If the match is not clear, the team decides rather than the system guessing. Every assignment can be traced and changed.

This saves the most work on collective invoices. PDR technicians often bill many cars on one invoice. Car Repair Flow reads the number plate of every line and assigns it to the job of its car. Each line is also matched to the technician compensation that Car Repair Flow calculated for that job from the worksheet. So the technician’s work counts exactly once in every job’s costs. At one customer with several locations, such collective invoices carried a median of nine cars over nine weeks. Of their lines, 96 per cent landed on their job without a correction.

Subcontracted work, spare parts and rental cars are reconciled

When the shop gives work to a partner shop, it creates an external order in Car Repair Flow. The partner’s invoice finds that order, and its lines are compared with what was ordered. Car Repair Flow checks spare parts invoices against the order line by line, adds up partial invoices, and shows any difference in price or quantity right on the line.

Car Repair Flow links rental invoices to the car and to the bookings in the billing period. Each rental day goes to the job that had the car, and idle days stay with the location.

Invoices without a job, such as workshop supplies, electricity or rent, are assigned to a location by the team itself. The location’s cost centres are then already filled in.

The account knows the kind of purchase

For every line, Car Repair Flow suggests the bookkeeping account, with up to three candidates, a percentage and the reason. Whatever is certain, accounts staff apply in one step. If a suggestion does not fit, they reject it or choose another account. Nothing is booked without a user. It works with SKR03, SKR04 and the shop’s own chart of accounts. With the account, Car Repair Flow suggests the line’s tax treatment, a domestic purchase at 19 per cent for example, or a service where the shop owes the VAT. It also shows whether the line is ready to be coded.

The suggestion does not depend on the supplier alone. The same parts dealer supplies spare parts for a job and workshop supplies for the location, and the two belong on different accounts. So Car Repair Flow learns per supplier and per line, and takes into account the kind of invoice and the job it belongs to.

The suggestions learn from the shop’s own bookings. Every confirmation counts. Once the same line from the same supplier has been confirmed twice, its account is ready straight away the next time. If you like, we import your previous bookings from DATEV at the start, so the suggestions do not begin from zero.

Approval goes to the people responsible

Once an invoice has its accounts, accounts staff submit it for approval. Who approves is already settled: every line goes to the project manager responsible for its location. A PDR technician who bills per location therefore sends a collective invoice that goes automatically to the project manager of that location, who approves it in one step. If an invoice covers several locations, each responsible project manager approves it. Rental invoices go to the approval group for rental cars. If a location has no responsible person, or two overlap, the invoice cannot be submitted, and Car Repair Flow says why.

Approvers see their open invoices in a list of their own and approve, or reject with a reason. If an approval is left waiting, Car Repair Flow sends a reminder by email and in the app. For a rejected invoice the system can ask the supplier for a cancellation and follows up until the credit note arrives.

Approved invoices go to DATEV with account, tax code, cost centres and the document.

Every cost shows up in the job

Because every invoice lands in its place, every job shows its costs next to its revenue: rental days, spare parts, subcontracted work and its share of collective invoices, each counted only once. The margin of a job becomes transparent, across several locations, and costs without a job sit with the location.

What a shop sets up first

• Invoice intake by email.
• The project managers responsible for each location, and an approval group for rental cars.
• Chart of accounts and the locations’ cost centres.
• The DATEV connection, with your previous bookings if you like.