Case Study: Stuart Plumbing & Heating Supplies achieves 40% faster invoice processing and improved accuracy with DocuWare

Using a modern document management system, expanding plumbing and heating merchants Stuart have automated accounts payable, saving 40% in processing time

Stuart Plumbing & Heating Supplies is a family-run UK merchant with over 35 years in business and eight branches across Leicestershire, Warwickshire and the Midlands. Rapid expansion left a two-person finance team manually processing more than 2,000 supplier invoices a month, creating a time-consuming, error-prone bottleneck that threatened month-end close and threatened the need to recruit extra staff.

Stuart implemented DocuWare (integrated with ancora) to automate invoice capture and workflows, removing manual tasks and surfacing discrepancies quickly. The cloud solution cut invoice processing time by around 30–40% (allowing month-end to close about 10 days earlier), eliminated planned hires despite 15% business growth, doubled accuracy, reduced paper use, and made audits and mobile access far simpler.

Stuart Plumbing & Heating Supplies

Stephen Elliott

Finance Director