Invoicing App

Introduction

SynerTrade's Invoicing App is used to match supplier invoices for payment. The solution is designed to manage the validation of invoices against purchase orders and goods receipt data. 

The invoices can be created manually by the supplier or uploaded to system. Both ways, allow Three-Way Matching after receiving the invoice information. Three-Way Matching manages a fully automated debit process by applying your rules to the invoice and it then sends the rejections and exceptions into a workflow that can be managed by yourselves or by the supplier. All matches are automatically booked and transferred to your ERP or payment solution. ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning System. We can receive and send invoices to an ERP-system. Our internal exchange format is SAP IDOC INVOICE02, but it can be mapped to any external format with lobster.
In "Invoicing" app, invoices are labelled as "billing requests" and although they fulfill the invoicing functionality, the digital transmission of data does not legally replace an invoice.

There are two general processes inside Invoicing app of SynerTrade internal system:

• Automatic matching invoice process
• Manual matching invoice process

The main content of this article is regarding the manual process.

Notification Email

When a supplier submits, re-submits or imports a billing request, the buyer receives the submitted e-mail from the supplier’s company.
When a buyer approves (also automatic approval) or rejects a billing request, the supplier that submitted the billing request with Invoicing roles, will receive the approve/ reject notification e-mail.

Roles

The available roles for suppliers and buyer are listed below:

Buyer Roles

• Invoicing Finance: User has access to the Invoicing.
• Invoicing Approver: User has access to Invoicing and Approve/ Reject actions.
• Invoicing Administrator: User has access to Invoicing and Settings.
• Accountant: User can view, edit, create and delete invoices.

Supplier Role

• Invoicing Supplier: User has access to Invoicing and can submit BR’s.

Supplier Side

Orders to be billed

The first step starts with supplier side. All open request orders in statuses "Order sent", "Partly Delivered" and "Complete Delivered" are displayed from buyer side in “Orders to be billed” page, on the left sidebar of the app. “Order number”, “Business unit” of the buyer, “Creation time” and “Total amount net” are visible in this page.
When the supplier user opens one of the orders, a page with all the positions, “Product ID”, “Quantity" and “Position price net” displays. In order for a billing request to be created, the supplier user should click on “Create billing request”. Then, the supplier can edit the page by changing the quantity, adding new positions or deleting a position. Moreover, there is a “Comment” field, where supplier can state the reason of any changes or additions to the billing request. Once the page is edited, supplier can submit the billing request by clicking on “Submit Request”. The billing request then will be sent to the buyer side.
Moreover, If the user leaves an edited billing request, upon returning, he/she is asked, whether to continue with the previous editing session or restart from scratch. Automatic save is available during editing. All columns of "Order number", "Business unit", "Creation time" and "Total amount net" are sortable by clicking on the arrows.

Submitted billing request

“Submitted billing request” page, displays the billing requests that are already submitted by the supplier. “Status” of each billing request is also shown with different colours for more clarity. The available statuses are:

• Submitted: billing is submitted from the supplier side; however, it is still open on the buyer side and no action has been done.
• Submitted to ERP: the billing request is transferred to “ERP” of the buyer side.
• Approved: billing request is approved by the buyer and the billing would be paid shortly.
• ERP Error: this status is shown in both supplier and buyer side. It means that there are some issues on the buyer side for paying the billing request and supplier can contact the account payable in order to pursue the amount that is supposed to be paid.
• Rejected: the billing request is rejected from the buyer side.

Once a billing request is rejected from the buyer side, the supplier can open the order and see the reason for rejection on the “Comment” field (if stated) and then edit or delete some positions and send it to the buyer again. As an example, a position has not been delivered to the buyer and here the supplier has the possibility to delete the position from the billing and submit the new billing request to the buyer. The status, however, will be changed to "Submitted" after doing all the mentioned actions. Moreover, "Order number", "Submission time", "Total amount net" and "Status" columns are all sortable by clicking on the arrows.

Partial Billing Request

Suppliers can partially deliver the order. This is manageable by having multiple Goods Receipt with different Delivery Notes. In order to send a partial billing request, supplier user should take the tick off from the Order Totally Billed inside Invoice Detail and enter the Delivery Note Number. Also user should delete the positions that shouldn't be billed in that billing order manually. In the future, this would happen automatically. It is crucial to click on "Save" on the Invoice Details at the end, otherwise the changes done after saving, would not apply.

Negative Values and Credit Notes

It is possible to enter a negative value inside a position while creating and editing a billing request. This will automatically change the total net and gross of the billing request. As an example, if the original position price is 100 EUR and a negative value of -50 EUR is added, the total would automatically changed to 50 EUR. This functionality will later be expanded into creating Credit Notes.

Search Functionality

The Search field "Orders to be billed" and "Submitted billing request", gives the possibility to user, to go straight to the detail page of an order, by entering the perfect match on the field.

Buyer Side

Billing requests waiting to be processed

All the open billing requests, are listed in this page. In order to validate the billing request, the buyer should click on one and then a page, similar to “Submit Request” page on supplier side, appears. The history of comments can be seen by clicking on “View all” button on the bottom of “Comment” field. Furthermore, the “Invoicing number” can be added for the billing. To be more precise, when there is a paper-based invoice available for the same billing request, the invoice number of that paper, can be added here.

Three-Way Matching Validation

By clicking on “Three-way Matching Validation”, a validation between: “Order” and “Invoice” “Invoice” and “Good Receipt” “Order” and “Good Receipt” will be done, so that the buyer can ensure that all data are matching in every document.
In case, the validation is not successful, buyer can see the issues by clicking on “Show Validation Issues” on the warning message. The positions with issues, appear on another page. Buyer has the possibility to reject or approve the billing request. By rejecting, the reason can be stated in the "Comment field" and sent to the supplier side.

Possibilities to have Three-Way Matching

Three-Way matching is only possible in the mentioned situations below:

• Totally billed orders
• Partial totally billed (last billing order of a partial billing)
• Credit Notes

Two-Way Matching Validation

Two-Way Matching does a validation between Goods Receipt and Billing Request. it can be done when having partial orders. The setting for Two-Way Matching is the same as Three-Way Matching. In order to have automatic Two-Way Matching, except for Quantity and Price nothing else should be changed. Otherwise, the automatic validation wouldn't work.
Also, the four columns "Order number", "Approval/Rejection time", "Status" and "Total amount net" are sortable, by clicking on the arrows.

Billing requests already processed

All the submitted billing requests and their statuses are displayed in this page. There is a button “Submit again to ERP”, which sends back all the billing request with status “ERP Error” to SAP.
“batch process” is also implemented. To make it clear, it can be set that every four hours each day, the system automatically sends the billing requests with “ERP Error” status to the SAP. Here, "Order number", "Approval/rejection time", "Total amount net" and "Status" are sortable.

Credit Notes

In the moment, system admin can import Credit Notes to the buyer's side. The billing orders that are Credit Notes, can be recognised by having a label by their order number. In the future, supplier would create a Credit Note and that will be transferred to the buyer side.

Settings

Three-Way Matching

On the left sidebar, buyer has the settings option, in which he/she has Three-Way Matching and two options “Manual” and “Automated” check. Automated is useful when there are lots of billing request to be processed. “Quantity” and “Price” are shown with percentages of deviation, that can occur during Three-Way Matching validation. In other words, if the buyer sets the “price” deviation to 10%, the billing will be validated even though, the expected price is different from the billing prices by 10%.

Transfer to ERP

In Transfer to ERP page, two "Manual" and "Automated" options are available. Inside Automated, a time frame is available that user can set it to a specific time, and all orders are transferred automatically to ERP.

Notifications

There are two extra notification options "Reminder" and "Escalation" that can be set based on the discount due date and invoice due date. Also these notification can be set to be sent to specific statuses such as "Invoice Submitted", "Invoice Approved" and "Invoice Rejected".

Workflows

User has the option to upload workflow specification to the invoices. There are two types of workflow types "BPMN" and "DMN" which are mandatory for activating a workflow. These files can be enabled and disabled. In order for one workflow to get activated, system checks that at least 1 BPMN and 1 DMN files are activated. BPMN file should always get activated first and then DMN and the second is referring to BPMN. In case, DMN is activated first, there will be a validation error displayed. It is very important that BPMN file should never changed by customer, only DMN is changeable by customer. BPMN can be changed only from PIM team of SynerTrade. Two criteria are now supported in workflow:

• total amount of an invoice
• Cost centre

both should be valid for a workflow step to be executed.

In DMN, there are not limits for the number of workflow steps. All criteria of DMN should be respected in order for a workflow to be valid. In case one step is rejected, the whole invoice is also rejected. It is necessary for the approver to be defined in DMN. There are two roles for this:

• Cost centre responsible
• Superior of cost centre responsible

The absolute assignment can be done based on the email of the user. if it is applied with combination with the first role, and if the role would not be correct, then the email address is applied.

In case 1 BPMN and 1 DMN are activated and also the Three-Way Matching is set to Manual, then all the invoices will be handled by the criteria inside this workflow. Automatic Three-Way Matching would not be done through workflow.

Contract Check in Invoicing

A contract that is assigned to a product in Webshop or Free request, is transferred into Orders and then in Invoicing. There are two labels available for contract inside an invoice to:

• Valid (green)
• Invalid (Red)

These two labels are shown based on two criteria Contract Validity and Contract Consumption.
Contract validity checks the contract status:

• Active or Signed = Valid
• Rejected or Cancelled = Invalid

Contract consumption is when the sum of invoices which are having one contract assigned to them, is compared with the total volume in the contract:

• Sum of all the invoices with the respective contract <= Contract Volume >> Valid
• Sum of all the invoices with the respective contract > Contract Volume >> Invalid

If only both Contract Validity and Contract Consumption are valid, the label would be green, otherwise it would be shown as red.

By clicking on the contract, Contract ID and Contract Responsible are available, in case accountant would want contact the contract manager.

Future Outlook

Invoicing App V2.0

Currently, SynerTrade supports "Three-Way Matching Process" against "Goods Receipts".
Five-Way Matching however, will be implemented against “Contract” in Invoicing version 2.0.
Four-Way Matching, which is against “Goods accepted”, will not be supported by SynerTrade.