Ada's 1-Click Invoicing Automation
- Pius Schmid
- Sep 22
- 3 min read
ada Learning, a Düsseldorf-based company with around 100 employees, operates in the education and professional development industry. They offer a variety of services and products, including subscription-based masterclasses, expert speaker placements for events, and - as their flagship offering - a fellowship program designed to build digital competencies, leadership skills, and innovation capabilities for organizations and their employees. With a global customer base, ada Learning is dedicated to providing tailored learning experiences that meet the needs of businesses across various industries and regions.
Challenge
As ada Learning expanded its reach to clients around the world and extended its services and product offerings, the process of creating (international) invoices for various combinations of services and products for each client became increasingly complex and cumbersome. For each invoice, the company needed to gather specific information about the services and products each client had used in the past month, determine whether these services were a one-time purchase or part of a subscription, and consider the applicable tax regulations of the client's respective country. Unfortunately, their standard accounting and invoice management tool, Candis, did not support the native, one-click creation and dispatch of invoices with such varied requirements. As a result, the finance team had to draft and send out each invoice manually, as well as manually enter it into their accounting system in Candis. Additionally, tracking whether a client had paid an invoice and following up on overdue payments also required manual effort. The manual nature of these processes made the workflow time-consuming and prone to errors, leading to inefficiencies and wasted resources.
Solution
To address these challenges, ada Learning partnered with NOA to develop a custom automation solution using their Google Suite and Make.com. The goal was to streamline the invoicing process and reduce the manual work involved. The solution developed involves the two key components:
Leveraging the Google Suite
Google Sheets serves as the central management tool, where all relevant client data, as well as the services and products used by each client, are entered and reviewed. From this central hub, tasks such as creating and sending out invoices, tracking payment statuses, and monitoring payment reminders can all be done with a single click.
Google Docs is used to automatically generate individual invoices, which are then converted into PDF files for distribution.
Gmail handles the dispatch of invoices and sends out payment reminders when necessary.
MAKE as the automation orchestrator
Make.com functions as the central tool for managing all workflow automations, seamlessly connecting all the tools involved in the process via API. It serves as the integration point where all the components come together.
The setup with Make enables the automatic gathering of all necessary information, the creation of invoices, and their direct entry into Candis with minimal manual intervention.
Additionally, through Make, the payment status of each invoice is monitored automatically, and if necessary, payment reminders are dispatched when an invoice remains unpaid.
Overall, an automation solution was created that provides ada Learning with a simplified, one-click invoicing process.
This allows the finance team to generate and send monthly invoices for all clients with a single action, considering the unique services and products used by each client as well as country-specific tax regulations. Invoices are automatically submitted to the accounting tool Candis, and payment statuses are tracked with reminders sent as needed.
Results
The partnership with NOA delivered substantial improvements to ada Learning’s invoicing process:
Significant time savings
The automation reduced the time spent on each invoice by 10 minutes, leading to an annual saving of over 6,000 minutes.
This allowed the finance team to focus on more strategic tasks, improving overall productivity.
Reduced errors and improved data quality
By automating data transfer between systems, the risk of human error during manual data entry was greatly reduced.
The automated process ensured consistent, accurate invoices, improving the quality of client interactions and reducing discrepancies.
Enhanced efficiency and scalability
The streamlined invoicing process allows ada Learning to manage more services and international clients without increasing administrative workload.
The solution provides a solid foundation for further automation, supporting ada Learning’s growth and efficiency.
“Thank you for the straightforward, swift, and solution- focused collaboration! With NOA's help, we were able to implement an automated invoicing tool tailored to our unique structures. This has allowed us to dedicate more time to other tasks and optimize our accounting. A strong recommendation on behalf of ada Learning GmbH.”
Lucas Ohmscheiper | Controlling Expert at ada Learning
BOTTOM LINE
By partnering with NOA, ada Learning transformed a previously cumbersome process into a seamless, automated workflow, enabling them to better serve their global client base and focus on their core mission of empowering organizations through digital learning.
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