It was a recurring source of frustration at the law firm. Invoices that, despite good intentions, weren’t being received centrally; receipts that went missing; but above all, the lack of an overview was the most frustrating aspect of all. The main goal for Poelmann van den Broek was to speed up and improve the authorization process.
Based in Nijmegen,Poelmann van den Broek has been providing high-quality legal services for 45 years, focusing on entrepreneurs, SMEs and larger businesses, and the construction industry. They do this not with empty promises, but by openly advocating for their clients’ interests. The law firm specializes in providing legal services for Construction and Real Estate, Manufacturing and Technology, and Retail.
It was a recurring frustration within the law firm. Invoices that, despite good intentions, weren’t being received centrally; receipts that went missing; but above all, the lack of an overview was the most frustrating of all. The primary goal for Poelmann van den Broek was to speed up and improve the authorization process.
Invoices left sitting with colleagues, receipts that turned up somewhere after half a year—it was a daily occurrence for his colleague Birol Cantürk, according to Arno Bomer, Controller at Poelmann van den Broek. “Our process was largely manual. Invoices didn’t always arrive at a central location. We set up a separate P.O. box for this purpose, so they would always end up in the same place. But in practice, that didn’t always happen, and they would sometimes just sit on desks.
After they arrived, the invoices were collected by individual and delivered in a folder to the people who had to authorize them—sometimes as many as ten people were involved. Then they went to the director, after which they were returned to the finance department, and only then was the invoice entered into the ERP system. Sometimes we even had to follow up with colleagues by phone to check the status of an invoice. That just didn’t work.”
Arno had seen that things could be done differently at a previous employer. “I spent half a year working at another company where they did handle invoice processing digitally. That’s much easier.” So things had to change—that much was clear. Poelmann van den Broek looked at a number of solutions from various providers, one of which was already a well-established name in the legal sector. Ultimately, however, they chose 4CEE. The solution’s user-friendliness was the deciding factor.
“We wanted to gain control over the invoice processing workflow. And we’ve clearly succeeded. We can now see exactly which invoices we have and where they are in the workflow. Now, when a creditor calls, we can immediately let them know where an invoice is in the authorization process and whether or not it has been approved. This not only gives us a better overview, but it also has positive effects for our clients. As a law firm, we deal with disbursements, where we advance court costs—as well as, for example, bailiff fees—on behalf of our clients. We can now bill these out very quickly. This way, our clients can quickly see what they owe us.
We’ve also noticed that year-end closing is faster. We recently moved to a new office building, which naturally involves a lot of investment invoices that an accountant wants to review. Previously, it took us a whole day to prepare those documents; now, they’re immediately available. In addition to being able to look up an invoice more easily, we can analyze the costs more quickly.
Still, we receive a lot of paper invoices and other documents—not just from lawyers, but also from legal service providers, bailiffs, and notaries. We have the mail we still receive scanned at a single central location. All incoming invoices are immediately digitized, so you no longer have any physical mail. An invoice you received five years ago will appear on your screen in two seconds. You no longer have to go searching for it in a (dusty) archive. Our firm is ahead of other law firms in this regard. They find it quite remarkable that we do everything digitally.”
“An invoice you received five years ago will be on your screen in two seconds. So no more searching through a dusty archive.”
Arno Bomer, Controller
The law firm has been using 4CEE’s on-premise software since 2016. In 2021, they moved to a new building, which was one of the reasons for migrating to the cloud. This move had been in the works for some time. “The practice management system—where lawyers track their time, create invoices, and handle accounting—was getting a bit outdated. We wondered if we really wanted to keep using it. Because if we did, we’d have to update it, but our servers were also due for an upgrade,” Arno explains. “The physical move was the perfect opportunity for us to adopt a digital way of working that’s less tied to a specific location or time, so all things considered, this was the right moment for us to make the move to the cloud. And with a cloud-only strategy, 4CEE’s software obviously couldn’t be left behind. This process was very well supported by 4CEE.”
In addition to all sorts of practical matters surrounding the migration to the cloud, one requirement was at the very top of the list…security. “Not surprising, considering we handle a lot of confidential information. As a legal firm, it’s especially important to us that our client data is secure and that not just anyone can access it. We want to know where the data is stored and that everything complies with the latest technologies and security requirements. And, of course, this data must be accessible 24/7. That’s a given these days, but for us, it’s a key requirement.”
“In our new setup, server security is guaranteed—4CEE takes care of that. Our system administrator no longer has to worry about updating the servers or the software. We no longer have to handle any maintenance; that’s now 4CEE’s responsibility, which is a relief. We’ve also set up an integration with Microsoft Azure Active Directory. Now, when we create a new colleague in a specific group, that person is automatically added as a user in Easy Invoice. An added benefit is that as soon as someone leaves the company, they immediately lose access to 4CEE’s software because they no longer have access to Microsoft.” Finally, Arno has some advice for people who are hesitant about the cloud: “Just do it! It saves you time and a lot of hassle.”
Although the annual number of expense reports isn’t that high, Poelmann van den Broek didn’t want to leave this unaddressed. “We see this primarily as a service to our staff. We want to be a digital office, so it would be strange if we didn’t digitize such a ‘simple’ process.” Still, a relatively simple process can cause a lot of frustration and take up time. “Before we used 4CEE Expense, our colleagues had to enter their name and bank account information—including all expense line items—in Word. Then they’d print it out and send it to us with the receipts attached to the back. Once we had that hand-signed document in our hands, we could finally start scanning it. Receipts would sometimes sit around for up to half a year because people didn’t feel like filling out a form. “My colleague would sometimes receive a form with twenty receipts attached—try scanning that. Not exactly ideal,” Arno sighs.
“Receipts would sometimes sit around for as long as half a year.”
“We had to choose between 4CEE and another provider, which we also use for our payroll processing. Since you already have to build in a lot of controls for payroll processing—which doesn’t really align with expense verification—we made a conscious decision to keep the two separate. But we also chose 4CEE Expense primarily because it’s practical. It fits into a workflow we’re already familiar with. This makes it easy for our employees to use. One of our attorneys called me to say how happy he was with it: ‘This is so simple to use.’”
“We’re not necessarily tired of change, but we have, of course, already gone through a few major changes recently. So we’re taking a breather for now, but we do see opportunities to use Teams and Power BI to ensure that people have up-to-date insight into costs and the amount of time they spend on cases. This is where we, as the Finance department, have a central role to play: to gain more knowledge and ensure that the right reports are available. Looking further into the future, I expect that we’ll gradually shift from reporting on past events to providing forecasts and taking on a more proactive role. “But before we get there, we still have a few steps to take,” Arno concludes.