Accounts Payable Automation Overview

Note: This feature is part of the Certinia Early Adopter Program. This program is only available to a limited number of customers. For more information, contact your Customer Success Manager.

Certinia has partnered with the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) provider to make invoicing easier for you. This is achieved by automatically allowing payable invoices to be created when vendor invoice attachments are scanned. The Accounts Payable Automation process streamlines your invoicing process, saving you time and costs. It eliminates data entry and reduces errors while improving accuracy.

When an email containing an invoice attachment is received, the invoice is scanned automatically and a payable invoice is created in Accounting.

However, if you fail to create a payable invoice, then use the manual process.

To start using Accounts Payable Automation, you must complete the email setup explained in Setting up Email Service for Scanned Payable Documents.

When an email is received with a vendor invoice attachment, the application uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to scan and extract all necessary information from invoices into a readable data format, JSON, eliminating manual data entry.

Once the scanned payable document is created, Foundations sends the scanned payable document to Accounting, which allows the process to automatically create a payable invoice if all the information on the scanned payable document is correct.

Notes:

To receive notifications for failed scanned payable documents:

  • The Context user's email address must have assigned the Create Documents without an Accounting License custom permission, Accounting - Payable Invoice and FDN - Manage Scanned Payable Invoice permission sets.
  • If a scanned payable document fails, only the Accounts Payable Users of that specific company will be notified.
  • If there are no Accounts Payable users of that company or the Company is not populated on the scanned payable document, then the Context User is notified.

If there are any errors after scanning, then those errors are displayed in the Scanned Payable Documents tab. Once the errors are corrected and scanned payable document is confirmed, you can create the payable invoice by clicking Create Invoice on the Scanned Document record page.

For more information on creating the payable invoice, see Creating a Payable Invoice from a Scanned Payable Document.

If the vendor sends an email to the generic email address or company specific email, it verifies whether the invoice attached to the email is valid, processes the invoice, and creates a payable invoice. If the invoice is invalid, you will receive an email mentioning that the payable invoice cannot be generated because of the absence of a valid payable invoice.

When the vendor sends an email to the system's default email address, the attachments in the email are verified for validity. These attachments can include one or more payable invoices, logos, or receipts. Once verified, the attachments are processed. Error scenarios are mentioned as follows:

  • If the email has no attachments, then no scanned payable documents and payable invoices will be generated, and the vendor will receive an email stating there were no attachments found in the email.
  • If the email has only logos or receipts but no valid invoice, then no scanned payable documents and payable invoices will be generated. The vendor will receive an email stating no valid invoice has been attached.
  • If the email has invalid invoices excluding logos or receipts, such as password-protected invoices, scanned payable documents are created for those invoices, but payable invoices will not be created for the invalid invoices, and an error is displayed as an inline error message on the Scanned Payable Document Lightning page stating no valid invoice has been attached.
  • If the email contains valid invoice attachments, the process completes successfully. The scanned payable documents and payable invoices are created for all the invoices, and the status is marked as "Complete". If the process fails, a bell notification and an inline error message are displayed for the failed scanned payable documents.

For example, only valid invoices are processed if the email contains ten attachments, including five logos and five receipts. If five valid invoices are present, five scanned payable documents and payable invoices are generated.

Notes:
  • If the Scanned Payable Document Email field in the Foundations Company object is empty, the invoices are sent to a generic email address configured in email services by Certinia Support.
  • No action will be taken for logos or receipts. So, the vendor will not be notified of logos and receipts.
  • If there are any other errors, then you will get an email. For more information, contact your administrator.

When an Invoice fails to create a payable invoice, one or more Accounts Payable Users of the corresponding Accounting Company who have the Accounting - Payable Invoice permission set assigned are notified.

  • If there is no company associated with the failed scanned payable document, the Context User is alerted through the bell icon.
  • If a company is present and still fails to create a payable invoice, the Accounts Payable User is alerted through the bell icon.
  • If a company is present and no Accounts Payable user is present and still fails to create a payable invoice, the Context User is alerted through the bell icon.

You can see a visual representation of the Accounts Payable Automation dataflow here: Accounts Payable Automation Data Flow.