Case Study: A Switch to Electronic Invoices Cuts Costs for Tim Hortons

Problem: Tim Hortons, the fourth largest publicly traded restaurant chain in North America, sought a more efficient and cost-effective system for handling invoices from its multitude of suppliers.

Solution: Partnered with a provider of hosted electronic invoicing (e-
invoicing) solutions.

Results: Since going live with an e-invoicing system in August 2009, Tim Hortons has reduced its operational costs in its accounts payable (A/P) department by nearly 50 percent.

Deluged by paper-based invoices, which required employees to open envelopes and key information into a system, Canadian-based quick-service restaurant chain Tim Hortons decided a more efficient and more environmentally friendly system for processing suppliers' invoices was needed. Tim Hortons turned to Transcepta, a provider of hosted e-invoicing solutions.

Transcepta's e-invoicing system is designed to manage the A/P department of a company as large as Tim Hortons — as of October 2010, Tim Hortons had 3,703 restaurants, including 3,082 in Canada and 567 in the U.S. By having its suppliers send their invoices electronically, Tim Hortons realized several benefits, including reduced A/P costs, more productive employees and the elimination of nonvalue-added elements of the invoice to payment cycle (i.e., vendors get paid faster and Tim Hortons gets a better real-time analysis of available cash flow).

"We were able to move from receiving 100 percent paper to diverting a large portion of our invoices to an electronic medium," says David Kraulis, senior manager of financial operations, Tim Hortons. "The beauty of that is it allowed us to deal with some of our large-volume vendors in a uniform way, and in many cases without the need for intervention by an administrator."

And for good measure, all this was achieved in a relatively seamless transition over the course of a few weeks. Tim Hortons had little to no involvement in training its suppliers on how to interface with the brand via Transcepta's e-invoicing system (Transcepta takes care of the entire onboarding process for all participating vendors), and its internal staff needed little training as well.