What exactly does DocuWare's solution for invoice processing do?

In a nutshell, our solution is used by your accounts payable department and by invoice approvers to automate your accounts payable process, with a focus on these key steps:

• Capturing invoices from a scanner, MFP, email, or drag-n-drop from desktop
• Validating invoices based on your defined business processes and rules
• Reviewing invoices, GL coding, and approval process
• Approving invoices by your organization’s stakeholders from any device at any time

Let’s break that down with some detail:

How are AP invoices captured in the solution?

Invoices are quickly and easily captured into DocuWare from a network connected scanner, multifunctional printer (MFP), directly from your email, or drag-n-drop from a desktop. DocuWare can capture invoices from different types of sources (e.g. PDF, TIFF, JPEG and other graphical formats including text-based formats such as email).

How are my invoices validated?

DocuWare Intelligent Indexing (a machine-learning technology) automatically captures the predefined data fields from an invoice that is required for processing (including Vendor Name, ID, Invoice Number, Sub-Total, Tax, Freight and Total Amount).

These captured data fields can be customized to your organization. With a library of over five million documents from various vendors all over the world, DocuWare recognizes over 80% of all invoices correctly — typically in less than a minute.

When invoices are not recognized, users simply highlight the correct information on the invoice and the solution will automatically remember this for future invoice processing. This takes only seconds.

How are invoices assigned to the correct approver in the solution?

1. First, it checks for duplicate invoices. This helps eliminate fraudulent invoices.
2. DocuWare will then check the invoice’s vendor name against the Vendor Records in DocuWare. If no vendor exists, the solution initiates an automated vendor onboarding process.
3. Invoices will be assigned for approval by one of the following methods:
1. QuickMatch (fully automated): Vendor invoices you receive that are fixed or repetitive can be identified for QuickMatch. A QuickMatch vendor is set up with a predefined dollar limit in your vendor master record. If the invoice falls under the QuickMatch thresholds the invoice will go directly to the booking process without any manual intervention.
2. 3-Way Match (fully automated): The required documents are a purchase order (PO), packing slip, and invoice. This process will match the invoice total with remaining open PO amount, and if there is a match the invoice will go directly to the booking process.
3. Cost Center Approval: For invoices that fall outside the automated process, DocuWare provides three approval options to suit your business needs.
1. No Approval: Once invoice details are checked, send it directly to the booking process without any additional approvals.
2. Requestor Approval: The invoice is assigned to a specific person or cost center for approval.
3. Multilevel Approval: The invoice is assigned to multiple cost centers with the ability to divide the invoice amount among the different cost centers.

How does the invoice approval process work?

QuickMatch (fully automated): Invoices that are fixed or repetitive can be identified via our QuickMatch process. A QuickMatch vendor is set up with a predefined dollar limit in your vendor master record. If the invoice falls under the QuickMatch thresholds, the invoice will go directly to the booking process without any manual intervention. This process also requires no time or energy from your staff and happens instantly.

3-Way Match (fully automated): When an invoice, purchase order (PO) and packing slip match, you have the option of “straight-through” approval for posting. Thus, for established vendors where the invoice is read properly and there is no variance from the PO amount (you can set the tolerance level), the invoice will move from initial capture, to approval, and back to booking for posting with no manual intervention. This happens instantly and requires no time from your staff.

Invoices requiring departmental approvals (cost center approval): For invoices that fall outside the automated process, DocuWare provides three approval options to suit your business needs.

• No Approval: Once invoice details are checked, send it directly to the booking process without any additional approvals.
• Requestor Approval: The invoice is assigned to a specific person or cost center for approval.
• Multilevel Approval: The invoice is assigned to multiple cost centers with the ability to divide the invoice amount among the different cost centers.

DocuWare kicks off a workflow to notify the assigned approvers who will see the pending invoice in their task list. The task’s due date will align to the due date of the invoice; if a task is not completed in time, DocuWare forwards the task to a substitute delegated approver. DocuWare stores every user’s authorization level and approval limits in addition to the user’s delegated approver and the user’s manager.

DocuWare uses Stamps, which are placed via an overlay that can be displayed or hidden on the invoice and provides a full audit trail of who approved what and when.

The DocuWare workflow collects transactional data throughout the process. Once invoice processing is completed, this data is available for download to be used as input to your accounting systems.

DocuWare also has a separate workflow for invoices that are rejected, and they can be restarted in the process with a reason code.