Transforming the Contract Electronics Manufacturing Market
MacroFab, an electronics manufacturer specializing in printed circuit board (PCB) assembly, is the operator of North America’s largest technology platform for electronics manufacturing. Their digital platform allows instant access to unlimited North American manufacturing capacity, as well as Fab AI-powered quoting and self-service ordering.
Automating Routine Accounting Workflows to Minimize Processing Time
As part of MacroFab’s growth, the Accounts Payable workload increased to approximately 400 invoices per month. The Accounting Team hand-keyed each invoice into QuickBooks.
During a time-and-motion study with Perituza, it was discovered that processing time for each invoice was approximately four (4) minutes – resulting in a total of 27 hours per month spent manually inputting invoices into QuickBooks. MacroFab’s leadership team, recognizing the high cost of invoice processing, engaged Perituza to automate the invoice entry process.
Implementing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to Eliminate Rule-Based Tasks
Perituza implemented a UiPath software robot (“bot”) to automate invoice processing activities. The solution was implemented and in production within two (2) weeks. Users now submit invoices to a dedicated e-mail address, from which automated processing takes place. Using optical character recognition (OCR), the bot:
- 5Reads invoices
- 5Extracts required data elements
- 5Enters invoice data into QuickBooks
- 5Attaches the invoice to the applicable record
The Results
%
Time saved % per invoice
Before (manual)
After (with RPA)
No. of invoices/month
400
400
Avg. time takes to process an invoice
4 minutes
4 seconds
Total processing time (hrs.)/months
26.67 hours
0.44 hours
Total processing time (days)/months
3.33 days
0.06 days
Key Technologies & Third-Party Integrations
UiPath
C#
Microsoft Azure
QuickBooks Online API
