Invoice and inspection-deadline agents for facilities management
Every maintenance invoice is checked against its contract, and no inspection deadline slips through. How it works at a facilities management provider with 600 properties.
The target values we set for this process during the assessment and track in the monthly report:
Where it gets stuck, what we build and what usually gets in the way
Tools and platforms: Microsoft Fabric, OneLake, Power BI, Microsoft Foundry, SAP RE-FX, Planon, Microsoft Purview.
Where it gets stuck
Around 3,100 invoices arrive each month across 600 properties, from lift companies, cleaning firms, gritting and snow-clearing services and inspection bodies. The framework contracts are spread across three folder structures; the inspection reports sit in the property managers' inboxes. Maintenance visits billed twice come to light at year-end. Missed inspection deadlines come to light when the insurer spots them. And the monthly reporting to the owners is put together by hand in Excel.
How we build it
The foundation comes first. We bring property, contract and invoice data from the ERP, the CAFM system and the folders into a Fabric Lakehouse, and structure the contracts so that service, interval and price can be queried for each property. Two agents run on top of that. The first matches each invoice to its property, contract and proof of service, checks prices and intervals, and pre-codes it. The second compares the inspection deadlines set by the operator's legal obligations with two things: the contractors' scheduled visits and the reports that have actually come in. Discrepancies go to property accounting. Appointment requests only go out once the property manager has approved them. Owner reporting comes from Power BI, on the same data.
What usually gets in the way
The biggest discrepancies come from wrong intervals, not wrong prices. The contract says annual maintenance; the invoice says every six months. Each case looks plausible on its own. It only stands out once you put the intervals for each property side by side.
Our contracts are 15 years old and filed as scans in folders. Is that enough to work with?"
That's the norm. The agent reads the scans and pulls out service, interval and price. A person checks the result once per contract, and from then on that contract can be queried. The first double billings usually turn up while the contracts are still being structured.
Shall we talk about your first process?
In a Short Assessment we sit down with your business team and IT and look at one process together. You leave with a clear target design and an effort estimate we stand behind. Free of charge.
