Automated Invoice Assignment

Automated Invoice Assignment (AIA) allows users to assign invoices from the invoice capture service to different users based on various characteristics of the invoice. The invoice capture service scans and runs invoices through OCR, then invoices are created within Emburse Professional AP.

Before AIA, there were two options Administrators could set in Company Preferences to have invoices created:

• Single User -assign all invoices created from the capture service to the same user.
• Unassigned Invoice Queue - create all invoices from the capture service in a common queue that all users can pull from.

Now, AIA allows Administrators to create rule templates with criteria that will trigger when the criteria are met and assign to a specific user associated with the rule template.

Administrators have access to the new Manage Invoice Assignments page in the Configuration module.

Once the page has been accessed Administrators have the ability to:

• Create new rule templates
• Edit existing rule templates
• Rearrange the order of existing templates
• Disable/Enable existing templates
• Delete existing templates

Creating New Rules

1. Click the New Rule Template button.

   

2. Enter the rule criteria:
   • Provide a name for the rule
   • Set the rule as Active or Disabled, this can be changed later without editing.
   • Click the New Rule Criteria button to add parameterization for the rule.
   • For multiple rule criteria, you may click the New Rule Criteria button more than once and multiple criteria are applied as sequential or statements.

   

3. Now, start to add the criteria which the rule will use to evaluate incoming invoices. The criteria begins with choosing which column or element in the incoming invoice data you want to evaluate against. The list of columns available is:

   Column	Description
   Bill To Address 1	Bill to address of the client extracted from the address the invoice is sent to.
   Bill To Address 2	Bill to address of the client extracted from the address the invoice is sent to.
   Bill To City	Bill to city of the client extracted from the address the invoice is sent to.
   Bill To Contact	Contact person extracted from the invoice if addressed to a person.
   Bill To Country	Bill to country of the client extracted from the address the invoice is sent to.
   BIll To Email	Email address extracted from the invoice if present.
   Bill To Fax	Bill to fax of the client extracted from the address the invoice is sent to.
   Bill To Name	Typically the root department / client name, but can be a department address for companies that use Bill to Department functionality.
   Bill To Phone	Bill to phone number of the client extracted from the address the invoice is sent to.
   Bill To State	Bill to state of the client extracted from the address the invoice is sent to.
   Bill To Zip	Bill to zip code of the client extracted from the address the invoice is sent to.
   Currency Type	The currency that the invoice is submitted in.
   FooterType	Value used to tell us if a line is an invoice line item detail or an invoice footer line item detail. There are four footer types TAXES, MISC, HANDLING, FREIGHT.
   Invoice Amount	The invoice total amount.
   Invoice Date	The invoice date.
   Invoice Number	The invoice number.
   Model Number	The product Model Number
   PO Number	The PO number from the invoice if present.
   Product Category	The category that a product is assigned to in the product catalog.
   Product Description	The product description.
   Quantity	The quantity of the invoice line item.
   SKU	The product SKU number.
   Vendor Address 1	Vendor address
   Vendor Address 2	Vendor address
   Vendor City	Vendor city
   Vendor Contact	Vendor contact person
   Vendor Country	Vendor country
   Vendor Email	Vendor email
   Vendor Fax	Vendor fax
   Vendor Name	Vendor name
   Vendor Phone	Vendor phone
   Vendor State	Vendor state
   Vendor Zip	Vendor zip

4. Once the criteria column is chosen then you will move on to choosing a comparator. Depending on the column chosen comparators will change in order to appropriately evaluate the data in the column. The available comparators are:

   Comparator	Description
   =	Equals - evaluates the received value and looks for an exact match
   ≠	Does not equal - evaluates the received value and looks for anything not an exact match
   <	Less than - evaluates the received value for a number and looks for lesser values
   ≤	Less than or equal to - evaluates the received value for a number and looks for lesser or equal values
   >	Greater than - evaluates the received value for a number and looks for greater values
   ≥	Greater than or equal to - evaluates the received value for a number and looks for greater or equal values
   Starts with...	Evaluates the received value and looks at the beginning of the expression and an exact match
   Ends with...	Evaluates the received value and looks at the ending of the expression and an exact match
   Contains	Evaluates the received value and looks at the entire expression and an exact match contained anywhere in it

5. After choosing the comparator you are now ready to enter in the value that will be used to evaluate the criteria. This is a free text field and allows you to enter any ASCII value. Such as numbers, letters and symbols. For example if I wanted to write a criteria for a rule where all my invoices for a certain vendor, say Unique Office Supplies, are assigned to a user I would complete my criteria like this:

   

   This would evaluate to any time we receive an invoice with a vendor name that contains Unique Office anywhere in the string would register as true and the assignment rule would be applied. However what if my vendor doesn’t use their entire vendor name on their invoices or has subsidiaries with slight variant names such as Unique Office Express and Unique Office Tech. Then you can use the same Contains criteria with Unique Office to match those variants:

   

   This would evaluate to any time we receive an invoice with a vendor name that matches this text anywhere in the entire string would register as true and the assignment rule would be applied.

6. Next, choose the user which the invoices should be assigned to when the rule evaluates to true. This can be done with the User drop down at the bottom of the page. All users that have been assigned the Enter Invoice permission will be available in this list.

   

7. Once you have selected the user simply click the Save button and the rule is ready to be used.

Invoice Assignment

When invoices come in and are evaluated against AIA rules as true they are assigned to the user from the rule. That user will be notified via email that a new invoice has been assigned to them and when they log into Emburse Professional AP they will find a new queue has been created to collect and display their auto-assigned invoices.