Case study · Finance / Accounts Payable

Ranny automates Pathé's invoices, even the paper ones

Ranny reads, validates and processes invoices for cinema group Pathé, from structured PDFs to the handwritten paper that food and concessions suppliers still send. The finance team works exceptions, not routine.

2.5
FTE freed
99.4%
STP rate
50,000+
invoices per year
4,375
cases per month
Ranny
Financial assistant
EmployerPathé
ChannelAP inbox & ERP
MarketNetherlands
Live since2024
Live
For PathéLive since 2024

Finance / Accounts Payable

Meet Ranny

The digital employee in Pathé's finance team. It reads every incoming invoice, validates the data and processes it, and flags only the exceptions for a human.

2.5
FTE freed
99.4%
STP rate
50,000+
invoices per year
4,375
cases per month
Industry
Entertainment / Cinema
Department
Finance / AP
Channel
AP inbox & ERP
Market
Netherlands
Live since
2024
Status
Live

Curriculum Vitae

How Ranny earned its place at Pathé

From automating structured invoices to handling the long-tail paper suppliers, this is the track record of Pathé's finance digital employee.

2024Appointment

Ranny takes over invoice processing

Reading and validating every invoice
Pain
Pathé processes a high volume of supplier invoices across all its cinema locations. Manual processing was slow and pulled capacity away from the finance team.
Solution
Ranny reads each incoming invoice, extracts the key data, validates it against Pathé's systems and processes it. It flags exceptions for human review only when needed.
Result
Invoices flow through automatically at scale, more than 50,000 a year, and the finance team gets its routine hours back.
Mailbox ManagementDocument ExtractionExtract & Validate DataAction Fulfilment
2025Promotion

Cracking the long-tail suppliers

Paper and low-quality scans, handled
Pain
A large share of Pathé's suppliers are food and concessions vendors who send handwritten or low-quality paper invoices and will never switch to e-invoicing. Most AP tools exclude them.
Solution
Ranny reads these hard formats too, extracting data from paper and scanned PDFs alongside structured invoices.
Result
Automation now covers the difficult supplier segment, not just the easy invoices, so far fewer invoices need a human touch.
Document Extraction
2026Promotion

Delivering finance capacity at scale

A measured, reliable finance colleague
Pain
To free real capacity, Ranny's automation had to stay reliable across a wide and messy supplier base.
Solution
Ranny's throughput and accuracy sit on a dashboard, and exceptions reach the team with full context attached.
Result
Ranny now delivers 2.5 FTE of finance capacity a month across 4,375 cases, at a 99.4% STP rate.
Action FulfilmentExtract & Validate Data
NextNext role

What's next for Ranny

Broader finance automation
Pain
Some steps still need a human, and there is more of the finance workflow to automate beyond invoice intake.
Solution
The roadmap extends Ranny deeper into the AP workflow and toward the remaining exception types.
Result
The aim is a finance colleague that closes the loop on the full invoice lifecycle across every Pathé location.
Action FulfilmentExtract & Validate Data

Skills

What Ranny does at Pathé

Four finance capabilities across the invoice workflow.

Skill 01

Mailbox Management

Classifies incoming finance email and routes each invoice to processing.

At Pathé
Handles invoices from suppliers across every cinema location.
Skill 02

Document Extraction

Reads invoice data from structured PDFs, scans and handwritten paper.

At Pathé
Covers the long-tail food and concessions suppliers.
Skill 03

Extract & Validate Data

Validates extracted data against Pathé's systems before processing.

At Pathé
Catches errors and mismatches before they reach the ledger.
Skill 04

Action Fulfilment

Processes clean invoices and flags exceptions for the team.

At Pathé
Frees the finance team to work exceptions, not routine.

Performance

How the team keeps score.

Live figures from the Freeday portal, measured over the last 30 days.

Invoices per year
50,000+
Supplier invoices across all locations
Cases per month
4,375
Handled in the last 30 days
STP rate
99.4%
Processed straight through, no human
FTE freed
2.5
Capacity redeployed to higher-value work
Structured PDFs
Yes
Standard supplier invoices
Paper & scans
Yes
Handwritten and low-quality documents
Long-tail vendors
Yes
Food and concessions suppliers
Exceptions
Flagged
Routed to the team with context
Column B shows the invoice formats Ranny handles end to end.

Connected systems

It works the tools Pathé already runs.

No re-platforming. Ranny reads from and writes to the systems the finance team uses every day.

Email inbox
Invoice intake
ERP
Invoice booking
Document processing
OCR & extraction
Freeday portal
Monitoring & dashboards

Entertainment

Finance automation for high-volume, long-tail suppliers

Cinema and hospitality operators receive invoices from a long tail of local suppliers who never adopt e-invoicing. A digital employee reads every format, from clean PDFs to handwritten paper, and processes them straight through, so finance scales without adding headcount.

Explore accounts payable automation

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See how Freeday's digital employees read, validate and process invoices end to end, including the paper ones, inside your existing finance stack.

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