130K+ year
Governed across the healthcare authority
66
Participating in distributed invoice and payment operations
72%
Invoice Dossiers progressing without manual matching
85%
Through automation and operational orchestration
1. The Operational Challenge
A large public healthcare authority serves close to one million people across one of Europe’s most densely populated metropolitan areas, coordinating hospitals, 11 healthcare districts and a broad network of territorial services. That organizational complexity is reflected directly in financial operations.
More than 130,000 supplier invoices every year must be correctly attributed, reconciled and governed across 66 organizational units before expenditure can progress toward payment. The invoice enters from the regional electronic-invoicing environment and initiates an Invoice Dossier. But receiving the invoice is only the beginning. Contracts, purchase orders, goods receipts or service confirmations, SAP events, accounting states and compliance evidence can become available at different moments. Each new element can change whether the expenditure is correctly reconciled, which organizational unit is responsible and whether the Dossier can legitimately progress.
Approximately 72% of Invoice Dossiers are reconciled automatically — more than 93,600 operations annually. But automation alone does not solve the organizational problem.
Coopera must also preserve who owns the expenditure, what evidence supports it and who is legitimately allowed to act as the operation moves from invoice receipt through liquidation, formal authorization and payment execution.
2. Why it was complex
The challenge was not simply processing a very large invoice volume. It was maintaining one financial reality while evidence, responsibility and execution remained distributed across dozens of organizational structures and multiple systems.
Responsibility cannot be inferred from the invoice alone
Supplier information does not always reveal which office, hospital, district or organizational unit actually owns the expenditure. Accounting context, procurement references, contractual information and supporting evidence can all contribute to identifying the correct responsibility.
Liquidability emerges over time
An Invoice Dossier does not become payable because a workflow reaches the next task. Its condition changes as: SAP Registration · Contract · Purchase Order · Goods Receipt / Service Evidence · Accounting State · Compliance Evidence progressively become available.
Correct routing is part of the financial operation
An invoice sent to the wrong organizational unit does not merely create administrative inconvenience. Payment deadlines continue to run while responsibility is being resolved. The platform therefore needs to understand enough of the current business context to direct work toward the right organization without losing accountability.
Payment authorization requires explicit responsibility
Even when an Invoice Dossier is ready for liquidation, public expenditure still requires formal authorization. The evidence supporting the decision, the responsible participants and the digitally signed authorization must remain attributable.
Fragmentation increases financial risk
When invoice handling, authorization and payment execution are treated as separate operational fragments, it becomes harder to recognize inconsistencies or situations in which the same financial obligation is appearing in more than one context. Persistent objects provide the wider history needed to maintain control.
3. How Coopera holds operations together
The operation evolves through three connected Living Business Objects, each representing a different level of financial responsibility.
Invoice Dossier
The Invoice Dossier is created when the supplier invoice enters the organization. The invoice itself remains content. The Dossier gives the expenditure its first persistent operational identity and can keep connected: Invoice · Supplier · Contract · Purchase Order · Goods Receipt / Service Evidence · SAP Events · Accounting Information · Organizational Responsibility · Supporting Documents · Reconciliation Results. Its condition evolves whenever new evidence or system events arrive. Automated matching and business rules continuously evaluate whether the required conditions have been satisfied and whether responsibility can be determined.
Approximately 72% of Invoice Dossiers can progress without manual matching. Where the context is incomplete or ambiguous, the same Dossier remains active while governed human intervention resolves the exception.
Automation handles the predictable workload. The Living Business Object preserves continuity when reality is less predictable.
Payment Authorization Case
Once one or more Invoice Dossiers become eligible for liquidation, they can contribute to a Payment Authorization Case. This represents a different operational responsibility: establishing whether public expenditure can be formally authorized.
The Case can keep connected: Eligible Invoice Dossiers · Taxes Controls · Procurement References · Fiscal Controls · Budget & Accounting Conditions · Responsibilities · Approvals · Digital Signatures · Payment Authorization Act. The formal authorization is produced and digitally signed within the same context.
This means the signature is not simply attached to a document. It preserves who assumed responsibility for authorizing the expenditure, on the basis of which evidence and under which conditions.
Payment Case
Authorized expenditure can subsequently contribute to a Payment Case. SAP remains responsible for producing the payment mandate, while regional Coopera infrastructure and national public-payment services perform the subsequent execution.
The Payment Case keeps connected: Authorized Expenditure · Payment Mandate · Signed Authorization · Regional Execution · Payment Status · Final Evidence. Different systems execute different responsibilities.
The financial operation remains connected until the payment outcome is known.
4. What This Looks Like in Practice
Asynchronous Reconciliation
The evidence determines readiness.
- An invoice can arrive before the information required to understand it completely.
- A subsequent SAP registration can provide accounting context.
- A purchase order can establish procurement correspondence.
- A goods receipt or service confirmation can demonstrate that the underlying obligation has been fulfilled.
- Each event changes the Invoice Dossier.
- A newly satisfied condition can trigger automatic reconciliation or make further work legitimate.
Missing or inconsistent evidence can keep the Dossier from progressing. Liquidability is therefore a continuously resolved business condition, not simply a predefined workflow step.
Contextual Responsibility
Getting the work to the right organization. Across 66 organizational units, identifying responsibility is part of the operation itself.
Coopera can use invoice information together with accounting, procurement and contextual data to support the identification of the organizational structure actually responsible for the expenditure. Where the context is sufficient, work can be directed automatically. Where it is not, the exception remains inside the same Dossier until a responsible participant resolves it. This prevents organizational distribution from becoming operational fragmentation.
The work moves. Accountability remains attached to the financial object.
From Liquidation to Accountable Authorization
Financial readiness is not payment authority. Reconciliation establishes that an expenditure can progress. It does not authorize the use of public funds.
The Payment Authorization Case introduces the additional fiscal, procurement, budget, compliance and organizational evidence required before authorization becomes legitimate. Responsible participants approve within that context, and the resulting authorization is digitally signed and retained as evidence.
Automation can prepare the operation without making authority anonymous.
Through to Payment Outcome
Execution changes systems, not business reality. Once expenditure has been authorized, SAP and the regional public-payment infrastructure perform the subsequent financial execution. Mandates, payment status and resulting evidence may move through different technical environments.
The Payment Case preserves their relationship with the expenditure and authorization that originated them.
Accounting systems, payment infrastructure and organizational responsibilities each manage their part. Coopera keeps the wider financial operation connected
5. The Outcome
The healthcare authority now operates a common digital financial model across 66 organizational units while processing more than 130,000 supplier invoices every year. Approximately 72% of Invoice Dossiers — more than 93,600 annually — are automatically reconciled, allowing manual intervention to concentrate on exceptions rather than becoming the default operating model. At the same time, automation does not remove organizational responsibility.
Each Dossier retains the evidence and organizational context required to understand who owns the expenditure. Eligible expenditure progresses into Payment Authorization Cases where statutory controls, responsible approvals and digitally attributable authorization remain connected. Subsequent payment execution continues through SAP and the regional payment environment while status and evidence update the related Payment Cases.
The broader organizational transformation is also visible in official payment-timeliness performance. In 2019, payments were reported at approximately 123.97 days beyond statutory terms. By 2025, the indicator had reached −2.86 days — meaning payments were being completed, on average, almost three days ahead of statutory deadlines. That represents an improvement of approximately 126.8 days in payment timeliness.
This organization-wide result should not be attributed to Coopera alone. It reflects the evolution of the authority’s broader financial operating model.
What Coopera provides is the operational infrastructure that allows invoice evidence, reconciliation, organizational responsibility, compliance controls, authorization and financial execution to remain connected while that transformation operates at scale.
The result is not simply faster invoice processing. It is a connected invoice-to-payment operating model in which high automation and distributed responsibility coexist without losing financial accountability.
5. What This Case Proves
Enterprise automation can remain accountable
More than 93,600 Invoice Dossiers can be automatically reconciled each year while responsibility and supporting evidence remain explicit at object level.
Distributed organizations need contextual responsibility
Sixty-six organizational units can participate in one financial model while every expenditure remains connected to the structure and people legitimately responsible for it.
Multiple Living Business Objects can represent one financial reality
Invoice Dossier, Payment Authorization Case and Payment Case preserve different responsibilities without breaking continuity across invoice-to-payment execution.
Operational transformation can extend beyond workflow efficiency
A financial environment that once reported payments approximately 124 days late was operating almost three days ahead of statutory terms by 2025, while managing more than 130,000 supplier invoices annually.
