'Every organization receives to a greater or lesser extent invoices from suppliers and that used to involve quite a bit of work. Nowadays, thanks to smart software, fortunately, it's really organized differently," says Sjoerd de Heer, Solution Architect at ICreative.
'Yet there are always those invoices that are still processed manually, because they are slightly different every time. As a result, they are not predefined in the system,' says Sjoerd.
Companies then often mistakenly think that they can't keep up with the automatic flow of invoice processing because these cost invoices, unlike contract and purchaseinvoices, do not have a fixed attribute. They are then typically involve recurring invoices from regular suppliers. The amounts are often relatively small and change within small margins.
Automatically assign booking templates for non-standard invoices
Recurring invoices can usually be assigned to a predefined accounting template, which specifies how the invoice should eventually be filed away in an ERP system. For example, it specifies under which cost item an invoice should fall. But if there are minor discrepancies in the invoice, such as a discrepancy in the amount or a number of different item codes on the lines, it becomes extremely difficult for most invoice processing software to automatically process these invoices.
Sjoerd: "Fortunately, the Basware software has a feature that allows invoices that look like exceptions throughout the invoice flow to be included in the automatic processing anyway. On the basis of specific information on the invoice, such as the name of a supplier, or on the basis of a combination of specific information, such as the name of the supplier and the product name, the correct booking line from a template can be automatically assigned to the invoice.
Instead of manually providing these deviating invoices with a template over and over again, this can then be done automatically. And that saves a number of manual actions per invoice. In practice, users of Basware software either do not use this feature or literally overlook it. And yet it is a quick-win for further automation of invoice processing.
Sjoerd de Heer
Solution Architect, ICreative
