Accounts Payable Features

Default Entity and Default Payment Term

Autonomous AP provides the capability to assign a default entity and a default payment term for invoices that do not possess an active entity or an active payment term. This provides added flexibility for the AP Staff to identify invoices containing no valid entity or payment term information. 

Variance (Tolerance) for PO Matching

Autonomous AP enhances the AP Staff's ability by allowing them to approve an invoice with a slight variation between the invoice amount and the PO amount. AP Staff can configure the tolerances (variances) for PO matching. 

This tolerance (variance) limit will allow invoices to be matched to a PO based on the Invoice Quantity, Amount, or Unit Price against a 2-way match or 3-way match as configured. The configured tolerance will determine whether Autonomous AP will raise an exception. 

Autonomous AP will support positive tolerance (i.e., upper limit) & negative tolerance (i.e., lower limit) for all invoice line-level attributes as configured on a match basis at a global level. If any of the tolerance checks fails, exceptions will be thrown respectively. 

  • Positive Tolerances -  If the invoice quantity, amount or unit price is higher than the PO quantity, amount, or unit price by a certain percentage or by a certain value, or both then the positive tolerance is applicable.
  • Negative Tolerances - If the invoice quantity, amount, or unit price is lesser thann the PO quantity, amount, or unit price by a certain percentage, by, a particular value, or both, then the negative tolerance is applicable.

PO Policy for Amount Threshold

In some use cases, businesses always need the invoices backed by a PO. However, they sometimes like to process non-PO-backed invoices but without raising an exception. The PO Policy Amount Threshold feature gives flexibility in deciding whether to set the rule of accepting invoices with a PO or without a PO against a threshold limit.

For example, if the threshold amount is set to 100 USD, then any invoices above 100 USD getting processed need to be PO-backed. On the other hand, anything less than 100 USD won't need a PO, and the invoice will be processed without undergoing a PO Match or any exceptions raised.

PO Smart Match

The Smart Match functionality allows flipping/copying PO lines as invoice lines in cases where users feel that the PO lines better represent the invoice lines and the invoice extractions at the line level are incorrect. Using this functionality, AP Staff can copy either a single or multiple PO lines as invoice lines, reducing the time taken to copy the PO lines individually.

Handling Multiple POs on a Single Invoice

Autonomous AP enables matching invoice lines backed by multiple POs. This generally happens in cases wherein an invoice requests certain goods or demands services from the supplier spread across multiple POs raised over a while.
For example, an invoice may have multiple lines and three different POs backing it. In this case, each invoice line can be matched to either of these three POs.

Supporting Non-PO Lines on a PO-backed Invoice

With this functionality, AP Staff can add Non-PO lines for PO-backed invoices. This ensures that the PO only consumes certain charges, such as tax, freight, and other miscellaneous charges. These charges must have separate accounting, and they want to account for non-PO lines.

Dependent Segments for COA

As per some organizations' Chart of Accounts (COA) structure, a particular COA segment's value depends on another segment. Autonomous AP can configure segments dependent on another segment, like a parent/child relationship. For example, if Segment B is dependent on Segment A, each value in Segment B may be shortlisted by a value or a group of values of Segment A.
This configuration is enabled in the environment, allowing the addition of the dependent segments. Once the setting is enabled, you can add the dependent segments for the parent segment for a Non-PO-based invoice on the invoice details screen.

Manual Holds

AP Staff can put an invoice on “Hold” and prevent it from progressing in the AP Workflow. This can be useful when more clarification is needed on an invoice or a dispute with the supplier arises. This ability ensures that the invoices are auto-approved once clarification is satisfactorily achieved.

Master Data UI Screen

Master data refers to the core data elements essential for processing invoices, which are pulled into Autonomous AP from the customer’s P2P/ERP system.
The Master Data UI screens display up-to-date information about Payment Terms, Suppliers, Entities, Purchase Orders, the Chart of Accounts, VAT, UOM, and Goods Receipts.
The Master Data screens enable the maintenance of the Master Data/Golden records, ensuring accurate information, a streamlined process, and improved operational efficiency in processing invoices.

Custom Field Mapping

Autonomous AP provides flexibility in importing custom fields from the customer's ERP/P2P system. Custom field mapping allows for the definition of additional fields in Autonomous AP that could be mapped to any custom fields in the customer's AP system that are essential for processing invoices.

Invoice Skins

When configuring Invoice Skins, AP Staff can choose to have fields configured as either Required or Active at both header and line levels. They can search for predefined skins on this page or add, edit, and delete Invoice Skins.

Smart Summarization

With Smart Summarization, AP Staff can group all the invoice lines into a new summary line. This is useful and may facilitate control when an invoice contains multiple lines of the same type and is coded as a single entry.

Amortization

The amortization feature can be used for businesses like Consultation Services, where customers can purchase any service they offer. The invoices generated in their business could be amortized over multiple months, so the customer receives a new invoice for that same service every month.

AP Staff will find the Amortization Start Date, Amortization End Date, and Amortization Schedule at the invoice line level and can configure them from the Invoice Skins. The Amortization feature also allows AP Staff to select the Amortization Lookup from their system and display the chosen lookup values on the invoice line.

The Amortization details will auto-populate for PO-backed invoices, provided the PO line contains Amortization details. 

Automatically split multi-invoice document

Occasionally, suppliers send emails with multiple invoices clubbed in a single PDF attachment. In such cases, AP Staff must download the PDF, manually split the invoices, and re-upload the individual invoices. Autonomous AP has intelligent AI models, which drive this functionality of splitting multiple invoices into individual ones and help reduce the considerable time and effort of the AP Staff.

Invoice Memo

AP Staff need more flexibility and control over invoice processing, which can often be accomplished by adding some context/background/notes while processing invoices. The Memo field at the invoice header and line level provides this capability to the AP Staff for their reference or visibility.

Document Type Classification

Sometimes, AP Staff want to review a document, even if it is not an invoice. Such non-invoice documents need not be processed or could be manually actioned by the AP Staff to decide the future course of action. Autonomous AP can detect the incoming document/attachment type intelligently.

The Attachment Type Classification on the invoice details screen shows the classification of the incoming documents and determines whether the document is an invoice or a non-transactional document type.

If the invoice category belongs to the following, such as - Standard Invoice, Credit Memo, Debit Memo, Pro-forma Invoice, Tax Only Invoice, or Down Payment - then the Attachment Type field will be populated as Invoice.
If the document is non-transactional, then the Attachment Type field will be populated with one of the following - 

  • Other Document
  • Statement
  • W9
  • Attachment Disposition

Autonomous AP allows users to configure these documents as Standard Ingest (regular processing), Auto Void, Auto Reject, or Do Not Ingest.

Invoice Workbench

The Invoice Workbench displays all the invoices in the various processing stages. The Invoice Workbench allows AP Staff to:

  1. Apply Header and operator-based filters to filter out transactions as per the requirements.
  2. Apply Date filters to filter out records based on a specific time range.
  3. Filter is based on the multi-sort functionality to view invoices as per requirements.
  4. Search for a particular transaction per the requirements.

In addition, the invoices workbench provides visibility into the processing states of each invoice. Each invoice follows a systematic workflow process as it enters and exits from the Autonomous AP as below:

  • Created - The invoice was successfully created in the ERP system.
  • Processing - In the process of Extraction and Prediction.
  • Review Data—Generally, this is the primary status where an AP Staff member needs to review the invoice and update the extraction results, PO matching, or accounting.
  • Validating - Autonomous AP is in the process of validating an invoice.
  • Review Validations—In this state, duplicate invoices or a suspicious supplier were identified. AP Staff can validate whether a high-risk invoice flagged was indeed high-risk and accordingly take action.
  • Review Exceptions - Review Exceptions is the state in which the “Business User” will act on the invoices with PO Exceptions.
  • Pending Approval—Invoices in the Pending Approval state await approval from the AP Staff designated as approvers. Based on the approver's action, the invoice will either transition to the next stage or be rejected.
  • Integration Failed - Autonomous AP created the invoice, but invoice creation failed. 
  • Processed - The invoice has been processed entirely in Autonomous AP and is ready to be returned to the customer’s system.
  • Rejected—The AP Staff has rejected the invoice, possibly because it was a duplicate invoice detected by our models, if the supplier was flagged as suspicious, or if it was rejected by one of the Approvers.
  • Voided - Generally, non-invoice types of documents would be voided.

Filters and Workbench views

Autonomous AP allows for the search and filter of invoices on the invoice workbench. AP Staff can narrow the search results and get specific matches using search terms and filters. AP Staff can search fields at the top of each column called Filter Headers.
In addition, Autonomous AP also provides the capability to save the applied filters and view them later, creating a custom “view” for themselves. This feature is called Workbench Views.

Export Emails and Other Attachments to the ERP

In AppZen users can export original emails and related attachments to their ERP systems. This feature eliminate the need to toggle between ERP and external mailboxes to access invoice-related documents. The original email and relevant attachments will be consolidated in a single location, thus reducing the potential loss of records. Users can view the invoices, the contents of the email, and the email attachments for audit purposes.

This feature simplifies the export of original emails and attachments to ERP systems. On the history section of the invoice screen, users can view and download attachments or original emails when the attachment is an invoice. The email and the attachments can be exported from each invoice record if an email contains multiple invoices. 

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