Case Study: City of St. Charles achieves an 80% reduction in invoice processing time with Laserfiche

How the City of St. Charles Reduced Invoice Processing Time by 80% with Laserfiche

The City of St. Charles, IL — a Chicago suburb of about 55,000 residents — was burdened by a paper-heavy accounts payable (AP) process: 88 banker boxes (193,600 pages) of AP records and a manual workflow that required clerks to look up purchase orders in Infor Lawson, print emails and invoices, and store paper files, which slowed approvals and payments. Processing each invoice took about five minutes and required frequent manual follow‑ups and physical storage costs.

The city implemented Laserfiche integrated with Lawson to automate three workflows for purchase orders, invoices and checks. Using Import Agent/Affinity, pattern matching, token calculations and scripted actions, Laserfiche extracts metadata, links invoices to POs, routes approvals, places holds in Lawson, and archives documents with retention and shortcuts for easy access. The automation cut invoice processing time by 80% (from five minutes to one minute per invoice), eliminated paper storage and record‑destruction costs, and centralized AP records for faster, simpler access.

City of St. Charles

Jackie Uhler

City Records Division Manager