Case Study: Harrison Catering Services achieves streamlined, accurate invoicing and faster month-end with Fourth's Trade Simple

Harrison Catering Service - Customer Case Study

Harrison Catering Services is a family-owned contract caterer founded in 1994, serving 100,000 meals a day with over 2,500 staff across some 450 UK sites. Rapid growth and a large supplier base created an inefficient, manual invoicing process—site teams rekeyed supplier invoices, head office re-entered and scanned them—causing lost paperwork, reconciliation delays, occasional overpayments and slowed month-end reporting, which hindered timely decision-making and threatened growth targets.

Harrison implemented Fourth’s cloud-based Trade Simple to automate invoicing: sites acknowledge deliveries, invoices arrive electronically, stock levels update and reconciliation becomes near-instant. The system processed 162,000 invoices worth £27m in a year across 430 locations, virtually eliminated manual entry, improved stock accuracy and supplier relationships, and freed finance staff for analysis—supporting the company’s expansion goals.

Harrison Catering Service

Gareth Harrison

Joint MD