Clean Supply in Glostrup is a wholesaler of cleaning agents, paper goods and machines for professional customers. Under extended producer responsibility for packaging, suppliers build an EPR fee into their invoice lines. With an extension from Invice, Business Central pulls the EPR fee out of the electronic invoice itself and puts it on the item as an item charge. Clean Supply knows the actual EPR cost of every item and can pass it on to customers 1:1. At the same time, every invoice line is matched against goods received and shown in green, yellow or red.
- Customer
- Clean Supply A/S – cleaning supplies wholesaler
- Industry
- Wholesale of cleaning agents, supplies, paper goods, mats and machines
- Contact
- Christian Oxlund, COO
- Location
- Glostrup, Denmark
- Employees
- 13
- Solution
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central + a tailored extension from Invice, together with Continia Document Capture
- Result
- The actual EPR cost per item, ready to pass on 1:1
- Core areas
- EPR packaging fees as item charges, supplier invoice matching, supplier units, electronic invoices (OIOUBL), delivery notes and FIK payment codes
The challenge: The EPR fee hides in the item price
Clean Supply buys from many suppliers. The invoices arrive electronically and are read into Business Central with Continia Document Capture. After that, every line has to match what was ordered and received.
Under extended producer responsibility (EPR) for packaging, producers pay a fee for the packaging they put on the market, and the fee is passed down the supply chain. On the supplier's electronic invoice, the EPR fee isn't on a line of its own. It's built into the item line amount as a tax. If the invoice is registered as it is, the fee disappears into the item's purchase price, and nobody can see how much of the price is packaging fee.
On top of that, suppliers don't always write the invoice the way Clean Supply ordered. A single line with a quantity of 1 can cover a box of 10. The price may have changed since the order. One invoice may cover half a delivery, or two deliveries on one line. Standard matching compares the quantity as it stands on the line. If it doesn't match, it gives up, and the accounts team has to work through the line by hand.
“Our suppliers don't always invoice the way we ordered. That's fine, as long as the system can work it out. Now it can.”
Christian OxlundCOO, Clean SupplyWhat we built: EPR fees as item charges in Business Central
Invice built an extension for Business Central that works with Continia Document Capture. It pulls the EPR fee out of the supplier invoice, so Clean Supply can see what the packaging actually costs on every item.
The fee is read straight from the electronic invoice
Continia doesn't read the EPR fee into anywhere it can be used. So the extension reads it directly from the OIOUBL file, line by line, by its tax code, such as 30E for the packaging fee. Which tax codes to pull out is set up per supplier template.
The EPR fee becomes an item charge on the item
When the invoice is registered, the fee is moved to a separate item charge line and assigned back to the item it belongs to. The item keeps a clean purchase price, the fee still counts towards its cost, and the invoice total stays the same.
The actual cost, not an estimate
Because the fee stands on its own for every item, Clean Supply knows the exact EPR cost instead of adding a flat surcharge. That makes it possible to show the fee openly in the price and pass it on to customers 1:1. The fee ends up neither as hidden margin nor as a cost Clean Supply carries itself, which keeps prices transparent and competitive.
No fee gets lost
Matching leaves the fee out, so an item isn't flagged as a price change just because an EPR fee has been added. And if a line in the file doesn't match the line that was read in, the fee isn't guessed into place. A warning is left on the document so a person can enter it by hand.
Every invoice line matched: green, yellow or red
The same extension handles the invoices the standard matching can't.
Green, yellow or red on every line
Once the invoice is read in, every line has been compared with the goods receipts and purchase orders it belongs to. Green means the amount and quantity match within the allowed variance. Yellow means there is a difference a person should look at. Red means the line couldn't be linked to anything. The bookkeeper sees straight away where to look.
An explanation with the real figures
Every line the system has matched gets a short comment. It says whether it's an exact match, a partial invoice, a price change or over-invoicing, and which receipt the line was compared with. Nobody has to guess why a line is yellow.
Supplier units are translated
If the supplier invoices 1 of something that was received as 10 pieces, the system works out the ratio from the amounts and remembers it on the item for next time. An invoice line for 40 can also be matched against two receipts of 20, oldest first.
The invoice has to add up before it's posted
When the invoice is registered, the system checks that the purchase invoice in Business Central adds up to the supplier's invoice. If it doesn't, registration stops with an error and nothing is created.
The order number is found
Some suppliers put Clean Supply's order number somewhere in the electronic invoice other than where it is normally read. The system then looks in the other places in the file, finds the order and adds a comment saying what it did.
“We register the green lines straight away. We spend our time on the yellow and the red ones, and it says why they're flagged.”
Christian OxlundCOO, Clean SupplyHow it's used today
The accounts team opens the invoices and starts with the yellow and red lines. The green ones can be registered without being checked by hand, and the EPR fee is already on its own item charge line. Each supplier template has its own settings for which taxes to pull out, whether to match against receipts, orders or both, and how large a variance is allowed.
The same extension also covers sales. The delivery note prints straight from the sales order as a single PDF, the invoice gets its FIK payment code automatically, and when a customer reorders, the salesperson pulls in lines from the customer's earlier invoices with Ctrl+Q.
- The EPR fee pulled out as an item charge on every item
- The actual EPR cost, ready to pass on 1:1
- Every invoice line checked against a receipt or an order
- Green, yellow and red show where to look
- No registration when the invoice doesn't add up
“What matters most to me is that an invoice that doesn't add up doesn't get posted. A person has to look at it first.”
Christian OxlundCOO, Clean SupplyAbout Clean Supply
Clean Supply A/S is a wholesaler of cleaning agents, supplies, paper goods, mats and machines for professional customers, including cleaning companies. The company was founded in 1998, has its head office in Glostrup, Denmark, and 13 employees.
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