All eyes were on Charlotte Schellerup during TaxTech London, an event “where indirect tax meets technology.” Charlotte is the Global VAT and Indirect Taxes Specialist of the Group Tax Department at Vestas Wind Systems, a Danish company specializing in wind turbines.

Charlotte’s group is responsible for the company’s VAT processes, both local and global, as well as for ensuring Vestas’ global VAT controls are in place and automated in the SAP system.

She explained that despite the fact that Vestas operates in 75 countries worldwide, has more than 22K employees and generated €10.2 Billion in revenue (2016), until 2014 the company did not apply to recover VAT for its massive T&E or for foreign invoices with local VAT.  At that time, they knew they were spending significant amounts in VAT, but unfortunately, had absolutely no visibility into their VAT recovery potential.

As the world leader of wind technology, Vestas sought to improve its bottom line by implementing more efficient automated processes to recover VAT while ensuring the company was in compliance with all applicable laws.

Vestas partnered with Vatbox, an automated, enterprise-wide, cloud-based VAT recovery solution, to streamline its global VAT recovery process, and provide full visibility, compliance, and data integrity. VATbox applied its proprietary extraction tool to 24 of Vestas’ entities, and after two years, recovered Millions in VAT for the company.

Charlotte explained that VATBox was especially successful because their extraction tool processes, analyzes and submits every single invoice, no matter its size. With 88% of Vestas’ T&E invoices below €50, the VAT refunds on these smaller invoices added up significantly. Says Charlotte, “It was so much easier and also much faster for them to do it.”

She was also pleased that VATBox’s reporting tools gave her visibility into tax coding, and whether their manual input process was being performed correctly.  “It was a good eye-opener for me,” says Charlotte. VATbox’s analytics further highlighted that the company had a high percentage of disqualified invoices. 30% of Vestas’ submissions were being disqualified because the invoices were missing the supplier tax ID or company name, or the VAT information was invalid.  Vestas worked closely with VATbox to improve its invoicing process and are now at a disqualification rate of 21%, a number they continue to improve.

In addition, VatBox’s analytical tools provided Vestas with a high level of detail about their refunds, helping them understand where they can improve, what went wrong, and where. The VATBox dashboard offers attractive visual tools to help Charlotte’s team present the data. In addition, VATBox serves as the go-between between the company and tax authorities, helping Vestas understand and address any inquiries.

Charlotte sums up her relationship with VATBox, “I like working with VATbox. They save me a lot of time…I’m just a very happy client.” You can watch the video here.

TaxTalk seminar participants reacted positively to Charlotte’s talk. They expressed appreciation for learning how new technologies can make their lives and their business operations easier, and for a clearer picture of what the future of indirect tax may look like.

About VATBox
Founded in 2012, VATBox has been revolutionizing the automated VAT recovery marketplace with its cloud-based solution that can be deployed in 30 minutes without any additional budget or IT resources. VATBox’s out-of-the-box solution handles reports, data collection, aggregation, qualification, submissions and the complexities that accompany these processes using a fully automated approach. VATBox implements the highest level of data security and compliance with all international rules and regulations of the various jurisdictions, and offers companies 360⁰ visibility into their VAT spend and recovery. Let us show you how your company can thrive in today’s complex financial times. Request a free demo here.

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