How Fire and Emergency New Zealand Modernised Their Accounts Payable Function with DI Invoicing

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Fire and Emergency New Zealand is a critical public service organisation operating more than 650 fire stations and supported by 3,000 employees and 12,000 volunteers. Every minute of their time and every dollar of their budget directly impacts their ability to protect communities across the country.

Yet behind the scenes, their Transactions team faced several converging challenges.

• Manual invoice handling and legacy data capture processes were slowing them down.
• Accounts payable functions needed to modernise as their existing document capture solution was reaching the end of its contract.
• Increasing compliance requirements demanded the adoption of Peppol eInvoicing capabilities.
• Mounting pressure to meet, if not exceed, the Government Payment Time reporting targets.
• Enforcement of business rules to reduce manual interventions to fix non-compliant invoices.

Fire and Emergency New Zealand needed a new solution that allowed them to modernise the way accounts payable invoices were processed, help achieve compliance requirements, and ensure that supplier terms and business requirements were consistently applied.

They wanted to modernise operations without expanding headcount or investing in new infrastructure by embracing a service that could scale efficiently while freeing their people to focus on higher-value work. The solution they sought needed to be highly configurable yet still an ‘off-the-shelf’ product - not a bespoke or unique application created exclusively for the purpose. But most of all, it needed to be completely ‘Hands-off’ for the Fire and Emergency team and new tasks or activities to an already Transactions team.

In short, the organisation needed to completely reimagine its accounts payable workflow without disruption to its essential emergency services.

The Solution: A Fully Managed, Cloud-Based Invoice Automation Service

Desktop Imaging partnered with Fire and Emergency New Zealand to deliver DI Invoicing - a comprehensive, fully managed cloud service designed to eliminate manual data entry, reduce risk, and ensure compliance with government standards.

As a New Zealand-owned leader in document digitisation since 1997, Desktop Imaging provided a service requiring no new software, no infrastructure investment, and no additional workload for Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s internal team.

At the core of the service is an intelligent document processing platform powered by AI and machine learning. DI Invoicing automatically classifies, extracts, and validates invoice data across multiple channels - email, physical mail, and eInvoicing - while learning continuously to improve accuracy over time.

The Results: Faster, Smarter, and Fully Compliant

The results were immediate and transformative.

Complete Process Automation
Fire and Emergency New Zealand now enjoy a completely hands-off invoice capture and validation process.  From receipt to approval, standard invoices are processed automatically, regardless of their source or format.

Accuracy and Timeliness
Parallel processing capabilities and real-time monitoring eliminate delays and reduce the risk of error.  Priority processing ensures service-level agreements are consistently met.

Resource Liberation
Freed from manual data corrections, the AP team now focuses on resolving exceptions and improving supplier relationships to deliver far greater value to the organisation.

Comprehensive Validation Framework
DI Invoicing performs multi-tier validation to ensure accuracy and compliance. These include: 

• Enforcement of IRD’s rules for Taxable Supply Information
• Vendor matching against approved supplier database 
• Purchase order validation and matching 
• Business Unit validation and matching 
• Bank account verification for payment security 
• Invoice date, currency, and GST exemption checks 

Future Readiness
With eInvoicing fully integrated, Fire and Emergency New Zealand meets the government mandates for faster payment cycles and increased digital adoption without needing to change core systems.

Why It Matters: Lessons for Enterprise Finance Leaders

Fire and Emergency New Zealand‘s journey shows that true digital transformation doesn’t have to mean disruption. By adopting a managed service approach, they achieved:

• Automation without replacement: modernising workflows while keeping existing core systems.
• Compliance as an advantage: meeting and exceeding government technical and security standards.
• Scalability without investment: scaling volumes up or down without additional infrastructure.
• Immediate efficiencies: freeing skilled staff to focus on higher-value work.
• Fraud prevention checks: ensuring payments are only made to approved suppliers and that the invoice payment information details match the approved supplier record.

For Fire and Emergency New Zealand, implementing DI Invoicing wasn’t just a process upgrade. It was a strategic shift toward sustainable efficiency.

The solution now serves as a foundation for ongoing innovation, with flexibility to expand into areas such as line-item extraction, supplier-onboarding, and expense claim automation.

Through this partnership, Fire and Emergency New Zealand has proven that even the most complex public service organisations can embrace automation confidently without disruption, keeping their focus where it belongs: on serving New Zealand communities.

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"Working with Desktop Imaging reminds me of something Sarah Maclean said, that 'the best partnerships aren't dependent on a mere common goal but on a shared path of equality, desire and no small amount of passion.'"

— Maxine Young, Manager Financial Transactions, Fire and Emergency New Zealand

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Learn More  

To discover how DI Invoicing can transform your accounts payable operations, contact us for a consultation and demonstration tailored to your organisation's requirements. 

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