Automated invoice processing – Economical and ecological
A green alternative
Invoice automation not only helps companies improve their bottom line, it also reduces paper waste.
No more paper-pushing
Invoice automation saves five paper copies per processed invoice.
This means that ReadSoft software spares the world of 1.4 billion paper copies every year.
Saving trees.
And planting new ones.
Through reduced paper usage, ReadSoft clients help save around 3000 trees per year.
We also help plant new trees around Lake Victoria in Africa (through the agroforestry organization Vi-skogen).
ReadSoft software saves trees and helps reduce CO2 emissions. The main saving comes from reduced usage of paper. We estimate that our invoice processing solution alone spares the world of 1.4 billion paper copies every year. This equals more than 3000 trees or 2000 tons of CO2 emissions.
E-invoicing boosts the effects
More and more companies are turning to ReadSoft's solution for e-invoicing (sending invoices in PDF, XML, image files etc). This digitizes the original invoice as well, which lowers paper consumption even more. However, the biggest environmental gains with e-invoicing come from reduced transports.
Saving trees, and planting new ones
According to www.timbercorp.com.au, a tree produces 22,500 pages of paper. ReadSoft customers reduce paper usage by 1.4 billion sheets, which equals 3000 trees per year.
To further boost the ecological effect of using ReadSoft software, we plant new trees around the area of Lake Victoria in Africa (through the agroforestry organization Vi-skogen).
Reducing CO2
Assuming that regular printer paper is used, the 1.4 billion pages weighs 6000-7000 tons. According to the European organization for the paper industry, CEPI, each ton of paper product uses 0.34 tons of CO2 (Ref CEPI: Sustainability report 2007).
Consequently, ReadSoft customers help reduce CO2 emissions by more than 2000 tons per year.
How the calculations are made
When invoices are handled manually, they are usually copied a number of times before they are passed around for approval as internal mail.
The Gartner Group (www.gartner.com) estimates that the average invoice is copied 11 times. We have used a more modest number and done our calculations on two copies per invoice.
Doing the math
The average invoice is 2.5 pages, plus appendices (which we have chosen not to include in our calculations to avoid exaggerating the numbers).
This means that ReadSoft software will reduce the amount of paper involved in invoice processing by 5 paper copies per invoice.
Since ReadSoft customers process 270 million invoices per year, they help spare the world of 1,400,000,000 (1.4 billion) paper copies every year.