More time for other things and relieving the burden on the many volunteers – that was the motto for this “Accounts Receivable Accounting Automation” project. An impressive club that puts a lot of passion into maintaining the operation of the steam trains and the maintenance of the Furka mountain line. Around 800 volunteers work for DFB AG on a daily or weekly basis in their free time. They ensure the operation and maintenance of the approximately 18 kilometer long route, the steam and diesel locomotives as well as the passenger and material transport wagons.
The highest steam railway in Europe Steam railway Furka mountain line (DFB), runs between Realp (1420m above sea level) and Oberwald (1368m above sea level). The panoramic trip over the Furka Pass takes around two hours. The DFB counts around 30 enthusiastic passengers per season, which lasts from the end of June to the beginning of October. The route leads through a largely untouched part of the Swiss Alps that is otherwise difficult to access. It winds through wild gorges and along steep mountain slopes up to over 000 meters above sea level.
The organization behind the steam railway consists of a corporation, a foundation and an association. The Furka Mountain Route Association has 8 members.
The DFB has developed its own, web-based, CRM-like tool for managing employees and customers of the AG and the foundation's donors. The so-called DFB intranet. Accordingly, this is not only used to maintain contact details, but also has many other functionalities. The AG also manages helper assignments and driving operations, has access to a wide variety of documents and publications, creates personalized letters and much more. The foundation, for its part, records all incoming donations, although so far without automatic payment reconciliation.
The association initially remained on the external membership and invoicing system it was already using until the end of manufacturer support was announced.
All three steam railway organizations also run their own separate accounting departments. Both the financial results generated in the DFB intranet and in the VFB system are manually transferred to their accounting systems.
The mandatory system change at the VFB meant that several problem areas could be addressed:
Because of the many similarities, the DFB intranet will continue to be the master, and the VFB is now also joining it. The desired automation should be achieved with a commercially available, integrated invoicing and accounting system. An automatic comparison of names, addresses and payment transactions between the DFB intranet and the new system is an absolute must.
Based on the requirements and experiences from comparable projects, it quickly became clear to redIT that the bexio accounting software was a cost-effective solution that could be used successfully. bexio has simple and powerful interfaces that not only enable the comparison of contact details and articles. The interfaces can be used to create invoices, print them in a PDF and monitor the receipt of payments. The “Accounts Receivable Accounting Automation” project has found its partner.
The DFB intranet is the master from where all actions can be controlled. Member data is transferred to bexio, the various member contributions are created as articles in different languages and at the end an invoice is created for each member.
The invoice is printed out on a given sheet of paper, which already contains a blank, easily removable membership card. To ensure that the member card is printed in the correct place, the PDF invoice created by bexio is post-processed so that the member card is printed with the correct data and the invoice and the member card can be sent together.
Because the invoices are created by bexio, debt collection becomes much easier. Deposits are automatically matched and recorded. The receipt of payment is ultimately transmitted to the DFB intranet so that the status of the invoice is changed from “open” to “paid”. If payment reminders have to be sent, the dunning process will also start on the DFB intranet. Payment reminders are created via bexio and ultimately sent by post via the online letter service “Pingen”.
A steam train ride over the old Furka mountain route is a unique experience. But it's a shame if there isn't enough time for this due to administrative work. By automating the dispatch and collection of annual invoices, redIT has made a significant contribution to massively reducing the manual and time-consuming process surrounding debtor invoices. Since then, the volunteers have increasingly been seen again in the steaming train on the Furka. By automating accounts receivable accounting, there is now the basis for further automation projects that relieve the burden on members.
The resulting solution was developed in close collaboration with the DFB team - we thank you for the partnership at eye level!
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