21K+ year
Governed through the operational environment
15K+ year
Invoice Dossiers progressing without manual matching
60+
Coordinated through one centralized liquidation model
85%
Through automation and operational orchestration
1. The Operational Challenge
A major university hospital in Southern Italy combines highly specialized healthcare, medical education and scientific research within one complex organization. That complexity extends directly into financial operations. Supplier expenditure originates across different clinical, administrative and support structures, while invoice liquidation and subsequent payment authorization are coordinated centrally.
Every year, more than 21,000 supplier invoices enter the operational environment from the regional electronic-invoicing platform. But receiving an invoice does not establish whether the expenditure is ready to progress. SAP accounting events, contracts, purchase orders, goods receipts or service evidence, procurement references and supporting documentation can all become available at different moments. Their progressive combination determines whether the expenditure can be reconciled and legitimately move toward authorization.
Approximately 72% of Invoice Dossiers — more than 15,100 every year — are reconciled automatically.
Coopera maintains the operational continuity behind that model, keeping distributed expenditure, documentary evidence, centralized financial responsibility and subsequent payment execution connected from invoice receipt to payment outcome.
2. Why it was complex
The challenge was not simply to process invoices faster. It was to centralize financial control while the information needed to make decisions remained distributed and asynchronous.
Distributed expenditure. Centralized responsibility.
Supplier expenditure originates throughout the organization, while a central liquidation function must establish whether each financial obligation has the evidence and conditions required to progress. Centralization cannot mean losing the context of where the expenditure originated or why it is legitimate.
Liquidability emerges over time
An invoice can arrive before the accounting and documentary evidence required to reconcile it.
SAP Registration · Contract · Purchase Order · Goods Receipt / Service Evidence · Procurement References · Accounting Conditions · Supporting Documentation can all become available independently. Each arrival changes the current business situation.
Reconciliation is inherently asynchronous
The operation cannot depend on every system and document being available at the same moment. New evidence must be capable of reactivating reconciliation without restarting the Case or forcing the entire operation into one rigid workflow.
Reconciliation is not authorization
Even when expenditure becomes technically liquidable, public-sector requirements still introduce fiscal, procurement, social-security, accounting and responsibility controls. The financial operation therefore needs another governed level before payment becomes legitimate.
Authority must remain attributable
Automation can prepare and reconcile expenditure. The final decision to authorize public funds must remain connected to the evidence, conditions and responsible people that made it legitimate.
3. How Coopera holds operations together
The operation progresses through three connected Living Business Objects, each representing a distinct level of financial responsibility.
Invoice Dossier
The Invoice Dossier begins when the supplier invoice enters the organization. The invoice itself is governed content. The Dossier becomes the persistent operational context connecting: Invoice · Supplier · Contract · Purchase Order · Goods Receipt / Service Evidence · SAP Events · Accounting Information · Supporting Documents · Reconciliation Results. Its condition evolves as new information arrives. Automated reconciliation continuously evaluates the available context rather than waiting for all evidence to appear in one predetermined sequence.
- A purchase order can satisfy one requirement.
- A service confirmation can satisfy another.
- An accounting event can complete the information necessary to reconcile the expenditure.
When conditions remain incomplete or inconsistent, the same Dossier persists while the exception is resolved. The evidence changes. The Invoice Dossier remains.
Approximately 15,100+ Dossiers every year are reconciled automatically through this model.
Payment Authorization Case
Once eligible Invoice Dossiers belonging to the same supplier are ready for liquidation, they can contribute to a Payment Authorization Case.
This Living Business Object represents the wider responsibility of formally authorizing public expenditure. It can keep connected: Eligible Invoice Dossiers · Supplier Evidence · Taxes Controls Evidences · Procurement & Fiscal Controls · Budget & Accounting Conditions · Responsibilities · Approvals · Digital Signatures · Payment Authorization Act. The Case remains active while the required administrative and compliance conditions are resolved.
Once those conditions have been satisfied, the formal authorization act can be generated and digitally signed within the same operational context. The resulting document is therefore not simply the end product of a workflow. It is evidence that expenditure has reached a legitimately authorized condition.
Payment Case
Authorized expenditure can subsequently contribute to a Payment Case. SAP remains responsible for generating the payment mandate, while regional and national public-payment infrastructure performs the subsequent financial execution. The Payment Case keeps connected: Authorized Expenditure · Payment Mandate · Signed Authorization · Payment Status · Execution Evidence · Final Outcome. The systems involved can complete their individual responsibilities while the wider financial context persists.
The operation remains coherent from supplier invoice to resulting payment evidence.
4. What This Looks Like in Practice
Asynchronous Reconciliation
The Case progresses when the evidence makes it ready. Supplier invoices and the information required to reconcile them do not necessarily arrive together. Coopera maintains each Invoice Dossier while SAP events, procurement information and documentary evidence progressively contribute to its current condition. Every meaningful change can trigger new reconciliation and rule evaluation.
This means that an invoice does not progress because a process has reached a predefined task. Its readiness emerges from the evidence currently available.
Centralized Liquidation
One financial-control function without losing business context. A central liquidation office can operate across expenditure generated throughout a complex university hospital only if the relevant context follows every invoice. Instead of reconstructing information from separate SAP transactions, procurement records, documents and organizational structures, the responsible team works from the persistent Invoice Dossier. Automated reconciliation handles predictable combinations. Exceptions remain visible inside the same operational context and can be resolved without moving the work into disconnected manual processes.
Centralization becomes possible because context is preserved, not because complexity disappears.
From Liquidation to Formal Authorization
Through to Payment Outcome
5. The Outcome
The university hospital now operates a centralized digital model for governing supplier expenditure while the underlying accounting and documentary evidence remains distributed across the organization. More than 21,000 invoices every year become persistent Invoice Dossiers whose condition evolves as new information arrives.
Approximately 72% — more than 15,100 Dossiers annually — are reconciled automatically, substantially reducing the volume of matching that requires manual intervention.
The centralized liquidation function can work from a consistent business context rather than reconstructing information across invoices, SAP transactions, contracts, procurement evidence and organizational structures. Exceptions remain part of the operation. Eligible expenditure progresses into Payment Authorization Cases where compliance evidence, responsibility and digitally attributable authorization remain explicitly connected. Subsequent financial execution continues through SAP and regional payment infrastructure while results update the relevant Payment Cases.
This operating model also coexists with sustained payment discipline. In 2025, the organization recorded a Payment Timeliness Indicator of −11.42 days, meaning payments were completed on average approximately 11.4 days ahead of statutory due dates. This is not a turnaround story. The organization was already performing strongly in 2019, when the corresponding indicator was −19.96 days.
That distinction is valuable: the case does not claim that Coopera created the organization’s payment performance. It demonstrates that high payment discipline can be sustained while a complex, regulated and document-intensive financial operation is industrialized at scale.
The result is not simply automated invoice reconciliation. It is a centralized invoice-to-payment operating model in which distributed evidence, automation, human financial authority and enterprise systems remain continuously connected.
5. What This Case Proves
Centralization does not require simplification
A centralized liquidation function can govern expenditure originating across many operational structures while retaining the business context behind every invoice.
Payability can be continuously resolved
Accounting events and documentary evidence can arrive asynchronously and progressively determine whether an Invoice Dossier is ready to move forward.
Automation and financial authority can coexist
More than 15,100 Invoice Dossiers can be reconciled automatically each year while formal authorization remains explicitly attributable to responsible people and supporting evidence.
Strong performance can coexist with operational complexity
The organization has remained ahead of statutory payment terms across multiple years while operating a complex healthcare, teaching and research environment.
