We’re trying to clean up a pretty manual process in AP and hitting a wall.
Right now we’re using Visa Spend Clarity for company card transactions. We average ~500 transactions a month, and our AP team is manually entering those into Epicor as invoices. It’s time-consuming and error-prone.
We were told Spend Clarity doesn’t have an API we can use with Automation Studio (or anything else), so we don’t have a clean integration path. I’ll be honest, I’m struggling to believe there isn’t some kind of client-facing API here, but that’s what my AP team is being told.
Has anyone dealt with this and found a better way?
idk but ebizcharge has sponsored this site and other epi user meetups, I think they have a full integration with Kinetic, so you might think about changing from that solution you’re using if they don’t offer modern integration opportunities.
The way Spend Clarity works is the P-Card holder logs in and codes each transaction (GL coding). Once their manager approves it, they export the data to a CSV.
From there, the AP team creates a miscellaneous invoice for each line item and ties it to a supplier for that charge. Some charges go to a generic supplier (like “Taxi”) since we don’t have a supplier set up for every vendor.
We process about 500 credit card transactions per month, and it’s basically a full-time job for one AP clerk.
Visa itself is not set up as a supplier. Spend Clarity is since they charge us a monthly fee for the P-Card solution. PNC is the actual issuing bank.
Just so I understand, it’s one miscellaneous invoice line per charge for each supplier? If I have three charges for Grainger for example, that’s one invoice from Grainger or three invoices?
If the Miscellaneous Invoices are made to suppliers, how do you pay them - as they were already paid through Visa?
Do you get a statement from PNC (Visa) or Spend Clarity for reconciliation?
If we get three charges for Grainger it would be one misc invoice and three lines.
We tie the misc charge to the supplier for tracking purposes but we dont send them payment, the transactions are more of a visibility effort so we can see all spend inside the ERP.
We do get a statement for reconciliation on a monthly basis from PNC.
Here is one idea based on what is the unofficial recommendation is for credit cards.
Set Up PNC Visa as a Bank
Set the Cash Account to the Current Liability account for the credit card
Import CSV file(s) into a UD Table
Use this as a batch and do a data validation to make sure the Supplier IDs and any other fields are correct. There are examples here on the forum.
Use an Epicor Function to Load AP Misc. Invoices
Since all data should be in the UD table, have the function create an AP batch and load the lines as invoices into that batch. This captures your expenses and tracks to the suppliers. If successful, mark the import records as processed for future deletion.
Review and Pay the Batch
This clears your payables and increases your credit card liability
Reconcile the Credit Card Account
Use Bank Statement Processing to import the statement from PNC and reconcile the transactions. Either use a Bank Charge to pay Spend Clarity (if they take the money) or add a miscellaneous invoice to pay them by check.
Use Bank to Bank Transfer to Pay Visa
This is usually a wire transfer anyway. Move cash from the checking bank account to the Visa Bank. This credits cash and debits the current liability account.