In many companies, approving and processing incoming invoices remains – as it always has been – a time-consuming process associated with high costs and slow throughput. Invoices need to be captured manually and assigned to the correct purchase orders or administrators. They are also often approved manually, based on the original paper copy. All of this leads to slow processes and high error rates – and, above all else, to unnecessarily high costs.
With «Kendox InfoShare Invoice Approval», your business can optimise this time-consuming process and realise the potential of cost savings and shorter throughput times. Rules-based, process-supported processing helps ensure high levels of transparency and significantly better access to information, including legal compliance thanks to revision-safe invoice archival. Moreover, invoices can be processed from anywhere in a single continuous workflow: in other words, they can be approved at any time, even on mobile.
«Kendox InfoShare Invoice Approval» supports the entire invoices-received process: digitising the incoming invoice, extracting and verifying its contents, processing it in a structured fashion including allocating accounts and cost centres, an optional multi-tier approval process, and handing over the invoice data to the downstream accounting system.
Invoices reach the business in paper format, as usual. They are then digitised so that downstream processes can ensure the continuity of the media used. Alternatively, invoices may also arrive by email (e.g. as PDF attachments) or by direct file transfer. In these cases, they are still handed over automatically for processing.
With the help of modern extraction technology, header and position data is automatically and reliably read from the invoices provided. As part of the extraction process, the data is verified against the master and transaction-related data in the company’s accounting or ERP system. This further improves accuracy while also ensuring that the information identified in this way is internally consistent («valid»).
As part of the verification process, the invoice can also be associated with additional information such as payment terms, account-related information, tax rates, etc. Using this information and the extracted data, the amount owed can therefore be sent to the downstream accounting system as soon as the invoice is received, allowing it to be provisionally booked in. The invoice itself is attached to the payment record, ensuring future access at all times.
When the invoice itself is processed, the administrator has access to a range of functions which significantly help with validation and processing. These include assigning accounts or cost centres to individual items on the invoice, including the option of splitting items between multiple cost centres, consolidating individual accounts into broader sets, amending sums and producing associated correction notes. You can also integrate predefined accounting rules into this step. Partial invoices and final statements are also optionally supported.
Employees tasked with approving an invoice are automatically informed and provided with all relevant invoice data, as well as the associated document, in a straightforward interface. Depending on how the process is defined, one or multiple people can be tasked with approving an invoice. This can depend on the invoice sum, for example, or the cost centre. Naturally, the process also supports sending queries to third parties.
Once the invoice is finally approved, all accounting data (including the extracted accounts, cost centres, etc.) is handed over along with the invoice itself to the downstream accounting system. Optionally, payment can be automatically approved for each invoice.
The entire validation and approval process is logged, and the process log is saved to a digital archive along with the approved invoice. This ensures transparent documentation of who took which decisions in the process and when, including the final approval. As well as comments and decisions made in the course of the process, the log also contains information about the assigned account and other payment-related details. In order to better visualise the process log, it can optionally also be attached directly to the invoice itself.
