# From 12 weeks to 5: how Mews cut market launch development time with Invopop

> Mews embedded Invopop for markets with e-invoicing mandates. Development per market fell from 12 weeks to 5, and compliance became a paid product feature.

Type: Customer story
Customer: Mews
Sector: SaaS
Interviewee: Patricio Roffo, Director, Product & Engineering
Countries: belgium, poland, france, italy, germany, norway
Published: 2026-09-22

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## In short

Mews is a cloud-based operating system for hospitality management trusted by more than 15,000 properties in 85 countries. Its hotels can only operate in a market if they can invoice under that country's rules, so every time Mews opened a new market, it first had to find a local e-invoicing provider, negotiate a contract, and then build an integration. So Mews embedded Invopop into its platform instead. The sourcing cycle disappeared, and average development time per market dropped from 12 weeks to 5, including in France, Mews’ biggest and most complex market.

- Cut development time per market from 12 weeks to 5.
- 400 properties issuing compliant invoices through Mews across Belgium, Poland, and France, with Germany and Denmark underway.
- Replaced one invoicing provider per country with a single partner for every market.
- Kept compliance off the product roadmap, with no certification timelines and no updates to manage.
- Turned market expansion from a one-off cost into a paid SKU inside the Mews product.
- Stopped losing deals to a coverage gap, with its one-stop shop promise intact.

## Results

| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Hotels invoicing through Mews | 400 |
| Integration | 5 weeks |
| Decrease time to market by | 50% |

## **Customers pick the platform that handles invoicing**

Mews' promise is a single platform for hotel operations, and e-invoicing is part of that promise. In a market with an e-invoicing mandate, a hotel has to send and receive invoices in the legal format or find something outside Mews that does it for them. The obligation sits with Mews' customers, not with Mews, but they still expect Mews to cover it, which makes the exposure commercial rather than legal.

"For our customers, invoicing obligations are knockout questions," says Patricio Roffo, Product and Engineering Director at Mews. "We don't even get to talk about our AI and our newest features if we don't meet them." Hotels evaluating Mews in a market where it cannot meet the e-invoicing requirement do not debate the issue, he adds. They "just stop talking to us."

Meeting e-invoicing requirements across markets means solving a different problem each time. Some markets require invoices in a specific format, exchanged through a government-approved platform. Others require e-reporting, where you invoice as you like but must provide the tax authority with the data, sometimes in real time. The formats, validations, tax logic, and certification processes differ in each market, and they frequently change. Mews has to meet all of these requirements.

Before Invopop, to offer compliant e-invoicing to its customers, Mews had to source a local provider, negotiate a contract, and then build the integration. Sourcing alone took weeks or months. Development added another 12 weeks. End to end, each market took 4 to 6 months, and Mews started from zero each time.

> "It was always a new contract, a new API, a new implementation. Months of work that were really useless."
>
> — **Patricio Roffo**, Product and Engineering Director, Mews

## **Building in-house meant less time for the product**

Mews is a software company, so why not build its own e-invoicing solution? It did, temporarily. To comply with earlier Spanish mandates, the team connected directly to the tax authority, so the in-house option was never theoretical. But it was a long and tedious process, and Mews ultimately decided against it. 

Every market would have taken developers' time and required additional certification work, with timelines set by the tax authority rather than by Mews. "Certification processes are usually really time consuming, and we don't have the time," says Patricio. "We prioritize investing that time in our own product."

So Mews went looking for a solution. Whatever it chose would reach its customers as a Mews feature, and if it failed, those hotels would not be able to issue invoices. The product had to be one Mews could put its own name on, and it had to come from a provider that understood Mews’ business model and customers. Most of the ones Mews spoke to did not. "You're not solving an invoicing problem for Mews, but for the hotels that Mews serves. That was very hard for some people to understand, and Invopop got it from the start."

The market appeared to offer two options: a suite from legacy vendors or a local specialist in every country. Neither was what Mews needed. Invopop was a third option: a global e-invoicing infrastructure built for software businesses, with one API covering multiple countries, plus support and advice for handling new mandates.

> "For me, the product is everything. Invopop has a top-of-the-game product, and I think that is their main asset."
>
> — **Patricio Roffo**, Product and Engineering Director, Mews

## **Each market makes the next one faster**

Invopop runs inside Mews. For Mews, that meant integrating with the API once. With that integration, Mews’ customers can send and receive e-invoices that comply with local regulations: a hotel issues an invoice exactly as it did before, and behind the scenes Invopop validates it, converts it into the format that the country requires, and files it with the corresponding tax authority or network. All without the hotel leaving Mews’ platform.

Getting hotels live is its own problem. Invopop onboards Mews users programmatically. Every hotel is its own taxpayer, with its own tax identity and its own invoice numbering. And at Mews' volumes, registering them manually is not an option.

Belgium was the first country Mews launched with Invopop, and it took 8 weeks. Every market since has been a configuration on top of that first integration, as what was built for one country carries into the next. Patricio says that with Invopop, it is "very simple to recycle past work."

Typical development time per market dropped from 12 weeks to 5, and the sourcing and contracting that used to come before development disappeared. France, Mews' biggest and most complex market, went live in under 5 weeks. Mews wrote no compliance code, manages no local invoicing vendors, and does not have to maintain connections with local tax authorities or manage country-specific certifications.

Mews is now targeting 4 weeks per market, with 3 or 4 launches running at the same time, which puts around 10 markets a quarter within reach. "It was unreal for us a year ago," says Patricio.

> "France is our most complex and biggest market, thousands of customers. We are closing that in just 5 weeks. We shaved off more than half of the time." 
>
> — **Patricio Roffo**, Product and Engineering Director, Mews

## **Compliance became a product line**

Covering a mandate used to be a cost Mews carried. With Invopop, this became a feature its hotels ask for and pay for. "We productized this inside our product in order to make the expansion efforts not a cost, but at least breakeven, and even a profit line," says Patricio.

Today, 400 properties issue compliant invoices through Mews across Belgium, Poland, and France, and Invopop processes more than 15,000 documents a month on their behalf. Once a market is live, the number Mews watches is uptime, which is currently 99.9%. A failure means a hotel cannot issue an invoice.

Germany and Denmark are already underway, and more markets will follow as mandates keep landing and Mews keeps expanding. "Expectations in terms of expansion pace will just get more bullish," says Patricio, "and we need Invopop for that."

If you run a vertical SaaS, Mews' story will sound familiar. E-invoicing is not your obligation, but your customers treat it as if it were. A mandate date lands on your roadmap without forewarning, sales teams start losing deals in markets you already serve, and focus is diverted from the product you are actually trying to build. For Mews, the question went from how to build an e-invoicing solution to whom to trust with it.

> "Invopop is not a vendor. It's not a supplier. It's really a partner. I see this relationship lasting for many years."
>
> — **Patricio Roffo**, Product and Engineering Director, Mews

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