Case study · Invoice management
One controlled workflow for every head-office invoice
A multi-property hospitality group needed to bring its related-party hotel invoices — billed to head office through scattered channels — into a single, tracked process from upload to payment. caratRED designed a centralised Hotel Invoice Management System to do exactly that.
Client
Multi-property hospitality group
Scope
Related-party invoice management
Approach
Custom workflow platform
Status
In development · launching soon
The challenge
Invoices everywhere, visibility nowhere
Related-party hotel invoices billed to head office were arriving through whatever channel was easiest — email, shared folders, the occasional spreadsheet — and once they arrived, no one could say with confidence where any of them stood.
Scattered submissions
Invoices came in through multiple, uncontrolled channels, with no single place they all landed.
No status visibility
Little insight into which invoices were pending, with whom, or for how long.
Manual follow-ups
Finance and the booking sources chased each other by email to move invoices forward.
No audit trail
Turnaround at each stage was hard to measure, and there was no consolidated reporting or record.
The solution
One system, from upload to payment
caratRED designed a centralised Hotel Invoice Management System: every invoice enters one controlled workflow, moves through defined approval stages with clear ownership, and is tracked in real time to closure.
Structured intake
Every invoice is uploaded with mandatory details — hotel, dates, amount, nature, billed-to entity and supporting documents — so nothing enters incomplete.
Real-time dashboards
Live visibility on how many invoices sit at each stage — review, booking source, finance — and the average turnaround by department.
Automated notifications
The system notifies the right person at every step, and flags any approval breaching its SLA — replacing manual chasing.
Complete audit trail
Every invoice carries its full history — who touched it, when, and what they decided — in one central, reportable repository.
How it works
Five stages, clear ownership at each
The scattered process becomes a single lifecycle, with a defined owner and a defined next action at every step.
1
Hotel upload
Each hotel uploads its invoice and supporting documents against a structured, mandatory set of fields.
2
Review & assign
A central review desk verifies completeness and routes each invoice to the right booking source.
3
Booking-source approval
The source checks the invoice against booking records and approves, rejects, or requests clarification — via the system.
4
Finance processing
Approved invoices are assigned to the right finance entity for review and payment.
5
Closure
Payment status is updated and the invoice is marked processed, paid and closed — with the full trail retained.
What it delivers
Accountability the process never had
Every capability maps back to a real gap in the old way of working.
Complete lifecycle visibility
Anyone can see exactly where any invoice stands, at any moment — no email required.
Faster approvals, fewer chases
SLA-based notifications keep invoices moving without manual follow-up.
Clear accountability
A named owner and next action at every stage, from hotel to finance.
One repository, fully auditable
Every hotel invoice, its documents and its history in one searchable, reportable place.
On the roadmap
Designed to grow
The platform is built to extend into OCR-based invoice reading, automatic booking-source identification, accounting-system integration, a mobile approval workflow and automated payment reconciliation.