business automation software

Processing Supplier Invoices“ A brief overview and technology guide”

Why the need?

Manual processing and approval of invoices wastes time Rapid move to electronic transmission of invoices Typically 50% of the invoices are now sent via email, typically as a PDF attachment Often the PDF document gets printed at the other end and then manually processed Businesses already invested in workflow and/or DMS technology still persist in printing and

scanning PDF invoices A simple solution is needed which will process both invoices received via email or post

This document will consider the options and their associated cost, complexity and speed of implementation.

Stage 1 – Check supplier

Electronic Invoices

invoices@acme.co.uk

Our Process

Stage 3 – Publish to DMS

Stage 2 – Extract meta-data from invoice ……..manual VS automatic?

Capture Email

Paper Invoices

Scan Paper

Suppliers

DMS Workflow Approve Release to ERP System

DB Lookup

How are electronic invoices captured?

We have two methods to capture PDF invoices sent via email – these are:

MS Office plugin – This simple Office plugin allows an email user to select an email attachment and submit it for indexing without the need for printing.

Monitor an email account – We have a service which can poll an email account (e.g. invoices@ acme.com), looking for emails and attachments which meet certain criteria (e.g. from a specific supplier, or with a recognised subject line). An automated response can be sent to the sender and the email attachment will then be automatically downloaded ready for indexing.

Scanning Invoices - there’s no Magic Bullet

Be realistic about your expertise and budget– there’s no magic bullet, the more automation you require, the more a solution will cost and the greater the complexity of implementation.

If your volume is relatively low (i.e. less than100 invoices per day), then are you really going to get a payback on an invoice capture solution costing more than £15,000?

Unfortunately, there’s now a perception that low cost solutions exist which will allow you to magically scan a batch of paper invoices and automatically extract via OCR (Optical Character Recognition) the information you need (e.g. invoice number, order number, date, supplier name, VAT total, net total etc.). If you want this technology, it costs, both in software and more importantly professional services and training costs.

Going a stage further, if you want line item recognition (i.e. extracting product codes, quantity, unit costs etc.), this is a whole new level of sophistication and cost.

Invoice Scanning – Manual vs. Auto Indexing

Solution Daily Vol of invoices

Typical Setup Time

Typical Solution Cost

Full Text OCR

Zonal OCR

Barcode Support

Auto Header Extraction

Auto Header & Line Item Extraction

Notes

User Scan Station

Less than 50

1 hour £500 √ X X X X Key from image - Great for low volume applications, where workflow approval is the main benefit.

Batch ScanStation

More than 50

1 – 2 days

£500 to £5,000 √ √ √ X X A powerful departmental scanning

application with zonal OCR and DB lookup capability which is quick to implement

Header Level Recognition

More than 250

More than 7 days

£10,000 or above √ √ √ √ X Out of the box header level

recognition but needs careful setup and training

Advanced Line Level Recognition

More than 500

More than 15 days

£25,000 or above √ √ √ √ √ The “Holy Grail” of invoice

recognition. Powerful line level extraction of data with PO matching. Complex and costly to implement – only consider if your volumes are high

* This table is only a guide and designed to give a flavour of the options and their associated capability vs. cost

User Scan Station – key from image

Index information manually keyed from imageDB lookup for supplier and code

Batch Scan Station – zonal & barcode capture

Auto read barcodes Drag and Drop OCRIndexes can be manually keyed, read via OCR, or populated from barcodes or DB lookups

Header Level Recognition

Indexes intelligently extracted, from anywhere on the invoice via the field labelsVendor/Supplier automatically

recognised and validated against a supplier record on ERP system

Advanced Line Level Recognition

In addition to header level records, line items information can be intelligently extracted and matched against a PO

Values can be validated for errors using mathematical logic

What is the best solution for your company?

• Choosing the best solution for your organisation can take time – Document Genetics can provide remote web demos, onsite workshops or professional services to help define your requirements. Here’s some questions to consider:

• What are your monthly volumes of purchase invoices? • What proportion are stock and non-stock invoices? • What proportion are paper vs. electronic? • What are the electronic formats and methods of receipt? • Do you have a top 20 suppliers, who raise the vast majority of invoices (80/20 rule)? • What fields do you collect from your invoices? • What’s your reason for wanting to automate your supplier invoice process? • What proportion of invoices matches your purchase orders, GRNs and delivery notes and requires no

intervention? • How do you currently resolve matching issues? • Do you manually approve invoices through the organisation? • Do you have an existing document management system?

• Bringing corporate technology to the SME• Cost effective and proven software• Fast implementation and Rapid ROI

“They don’t do Bloatware – just bulletproof solutions with a fast ROI.”Bill Griffiths, Autosmart

“It’s like an extra worker who works 24x7x365 and never asks for a pay rise.” Andy Siviter, Betterware

Why Document Genetics?

Some of our clients

t: 01604 671177e: info@document-genetics.co.ukw: www.document-genetics.co.uk

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business automation software