From a “basket” full of invoices to a digital cost overview: How Rödl & Herdegen modernized its invoice verification

Rödl & Herdegen has been building in the Regensburg area since 1962. As a medium-sized family business, the company faced a typical challenge in the construction industry: how to keep costs under control as the number of projects grows, without the administration drowning in mountains of paperwork and Excel spreadsheets? The next generation found the answer in specialized industry software. 

Gaining an overview took time 

The commercial processes at Rödl & Herdegen worked, but they were labor-intensive. Invoices were kept in folders, and approvals relied on manual, rigid processes. Cost tracking was done in Excel, and across multiple projects, the current status of cost management was only partially transparent. Anyone wanting to know the most recent cost of a specific material had to manually piece together price comparisons. 

The effort involved was most apparent during the approval process itself. A memory from Managing Director and shareholder Thomas Rödl illustrates how much this way of working defined daily life: "I used to always drive home on the weekend with a stack of invoices that fit into a basket, and I would sign them one by one."

Many medium-sized construction companies are familiar with this: as long as approvals are tied to paper and physical presence, processes drag on. Furthermore, inconsistent manual entry means that the traceability of project costs is lost.

The next generation drives digitalization 

At Rödl & Herdegen, the next generation—Kristin Rödl and Katarina Rödl—is set to lead the company into the future. Kristin, who is involved in the company's commercial operations, recognized early on the great potential in digitizing commercial workflows. This was the next logical step toward greater cost transparency, improved management, and precise oversight. This led to the search for a suitable solution on the market.

Especially when the industry is facing economically challenging times, it is crucial to position oneself in a future-oriented and efficient manner. For Rödl & Herdegen, it was decisive not to introduce a generic office solution, but to find software that inherently understands the individual requirements of a construction company. With reebuild, they chose a construction-specific solution that also comes from the local DACH region, which was an added bonus. 

Another criterion is important to the Rödl & Herdegen firm: just as their own company continues to evolve, they want their software partner to evolve and keep pace with the times. From Kristin Rödl's perspective, the conscious decision to choose a young, specialized company rather than a large corporation offers concrete advantages: "With reebuild, we have a partnership on equal footing, personal contacts instead of anonymous bots, and an interface that meets expectations for modern software—clear, fast, and intuitive." 

Bringing proven processes into the digital age 

The deciding factor for getting started was less about a single feature and more about the level of support. The onboarding process was personal and closely guided, and that is exactly what encouraged the team to tackle digital transformation in such an important and sensitive core area. 

Nicolaus Lederer, COO of reebuild, describes the guiding principle behind this: "We try to bring a company's proven processes into the digital age rather than forcing a foreign way of working on them. reebuild maps out who is allowed to see, approve, edit, or forward what, and thus adapts to established workflows instead of replacing them." 

For a company where many employees have been following the same well-rehearsed paths for years, this flexibility was a key factor. 

A common data foundation 

Today, reebuild covers a core commercial process at Rödl & Herdegen. From site management and accounting to executive leadership, the solution serves as a common, reliable data foundation: due dates and deadlines can be met, deductions and corrections are documented in a traceable way, and the team can communicate directly about each individual invoice via the activity log. 

The advantage lies in the underlying structure. Since every invoice exists as a structured data set, the information can be prepared as required by each specific role—by project, by cost center, or by business partner. Everyone works with the same data set, but in their own view. 

Less paper to carry, more time for data analysis and application

A noticeable change is the overview. Where cost statuses were previously laboriously and time-consumingly compiled from Excel and folders, they can now be viewed in one place. "Company-wide transparency and the traceability of invoices and cost statuses have become significantly easier with reebuild," says Kristin Rödl regarding the benefits of digitalization with reebuild. 

And the basket full of invoices? That stays at home now. Because everything is linked in reebuild, Thomas Rödl now approves invoices via batch processing—anywhere, anytime, and in a fraction of the time it used to take. The time gained is now invested where it is more valuable: in the substantive and strategic analysis of the figures rather than in their administration. 

Kristin Rödl also emphasizes a point that is often misunderstood: “More efficient workflows are not about cutting staff. They create the capacity to handle more projects properly with the same team.” 

Kristin Rödl also emphasizes a point that is often misunderstood:

“More efficient workflows are not about cutting staff. They create the capacity to handle more projects properly with the same team.”

The e-invoicing mandate is being rolled out in stages 

Requirements for invoice processing are increasing across the industry. Since January 1, 2025, every company in Germany must be able to receive e-invoices and archive them in compliance with GoBD standards. Starting January 1, 2027, the obligation to issue structured e-invoices applies to companies with an annual turnover of more than 800,000 euros, and from January 1, 2028, for all other B2B companies. A simple PDF does not qualify as an e-invoice – only structured formats compliant with the EN 16931 standard, such as ZUGFeRD and XRechnung, are accepted. Those who already process incoming documents as structured datasets are well-positioned for these requirements: reebuild supports all common e-invoicing formats like ZUGFeRD, XRechnung, and Peppol, making electronic invoicing the standard rather than the exception.