A roofer finds every leak. The one in their own office is harder to see, because no water drips there. Minutes do.
Hans Hobeck u. Söhne Dachbau GmbH, a roofing company from Belgern, has been around since 1927, with 5 generations of family tradition. About 160 invoices arrive there every month, for materials, tools and vehicles. Together we worked out what one of those invoices costs before it is even paid.
Where the minutes drip through
Every invoice went through the same hands. Open it, type in the supplier, invoice number, amounts and due date, find the job site from the delivery note or purchase order, forward it for approval, and chase it up when no answer came.
That took about 5 minutes per invoice. Sounds like a drop. At 160 invoices it is more than 13 hours a month.
Germany’s Federal Statistical Office puts labour costs in construction for 2025 at €39.60 per hour. The typing, looking up and chasing alone cost Hobeck about €530 a month.
Run the numbers for your own business: invoices per month times minutes per invoice, divided by 60, times €39.60. Whatever comes out drips away every month.
The job site had no field
Hobeck already had invoice software. The programs only asked for what their makers thought was important, and they could hardly be adapted.
Of all things, the job site had no field of its own. Yet that is exactly what a roofer wants to know: what a roof cost in the end. So the assignment ended up in notes, in emails and in the heads of people who also go on holiday now and then.
The discount goes down the gutter
Approving an invoice often took more than 7 days. Whoever had to approve it got it by email and did not always keep it in view between job sites and quotes.
Many suppliers grant 2 percent Skonto, the German early payment discount, if the invoice is paid within 10 to 14 days. By the time the invoice had arrived, been approved and been paid by bank transfer, the deadline had often passed. At Hobeck that came to about €1,000 a month.
Then there were duplicates. The same invoice sent by email and uploaded again was only caught if someone remembered the first one.
How we sealed the office
Hobeck did not need new accounting. DATEV, the German accounting software, stays. With the team we first traced the route an invoice takes from the inbox to the bank transfer and turned it into a workflow in Pharen Hub.
An agent team reads every invoice, fills in 8 fields and suggests the job site, for example from the delivery address, the job reference or the order number. Whatever it cannot recognise with certainty, it flags instead of guessing.
Check rules stop an invoice when required details are missing, a possible duplicate turns up or the cost centre is unclear. Above a set amount, management approves, and if an approval sits untouched, the Hub sends a reminder. Only then does the invoice go to DATEV.
Booking and paying stay with people. The workflow prepares. It gets no say in any decision.
The bottom line
What remains per invoice today is under 30 seconds: a look at the fields and the approval. That saves about 12 hours a month, about €475 at €39.60 per hour.
An invoice is now usually approved after 1 to 2 days. That keeps the discount deadline within reach, and Hobeck now takes about €1,000 a month in extra early payment discounts. Together that is about €1,500 a month. The workflow also stops about 4 possible duplicates a month before anyone pays. All figures are in the Hobeck case.
The number of invoices has stayed the same. Only now each one is watertight, with its job site and approval, before the discount is gone.
Is something dripping in your office too? Get in touch, we’ll bring the ladder 🪜