Hutix, an IT staffing and secondment agency, paid its own suppliers within 30 days. Its clients paid invoices in 60 to 90. That gap was bridged with factoring: selling outstanding invoices to a bank for immediate cash. Preparing the data for it was a manual job, done once a week.
The challenge: cash locked up behind a manual export
Every week, someone pulled outstanding invoices and debtor data out of Exact Online by hand, reshaped it into the format the bank needed, and sent it off for factoring. It worked, but it capped how often Hutix could convert receivables into cash: once a week, no faster.
The solution: an Azure Data Factory pipeline on Exact Online
I built a pipeline in Azure Data Factory that authenticates against the Exact Online API on its own, refreshing and storing OAuth tokens in an Azure SQL database so the connection never needs manual renewal. From there it pulls outstanding sales invoices and debtor data, processes and stages it in Azure Blob Storage, then exports it in the exact format the bank requires for factoring.
“Wouter played a key role in orchestrating the establishment of a business-essential data pipeline. Wouter’s mastery in setting up reliable data pipelines speaks volumes about his commitment to efficiency.”
— Styn Vanhove, CEO, Hutix
The result: factoring, every day instead of every week
The export that used to take a person part of a day, once a week, now runs on its own, every day. Hutix turns outstanding invoices into cash daily instead of weekly, speeding up its cash conversion cycle without adding headcount to run the process.
| Source data | Exact Online (invoices, debtors) |
| Architecture | Azure Data Factory pipelines, Azure SQL Database, Azure Blob Storage |
| Authentication | Automated OAuth token refresh, stored in Azure SQL |
| Output | Bank-required export format for factoring |
| Cadence | Daily, up from weekly |
About Hutix
Hutix was an IT staffing and secondment agency in Belgium.