Common Challenges - AP Automation

ECM
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I’m curious to know what other ECM users and/or developers have found to be common challenges within the AP Automation solution. I know we often deal with date formatting, tax handling and multi-tiered approval processes.

What types of things are others having to accommodate for? What are some things you wish ECM could do as it relates to AP Automation?

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I’d second the multitiered approval process, probably the other two as well.

For us it’s the training/drift of model on our documents through IDC, but I haven’t updated to the newest version of IDC yet.

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Regarding IDC, there has been a significant improvement in the new versions as it now employs Azure to power its OCR capabilities. At least that’s been my experience.

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We modified our workflows pretty heavily and split them out into various invoice type workflows (credits, debits, zero-dollar/file copy, special ones, private/corporate ones, etc.) which have different needs. If the workflow tools had a little more flexibility in the ‘decision path’ we might be able to consolidate some of these because there is substantial duplication.

Multi-level approval can be done, it’s just not great - so that is a good idea.

3-way matching - we had to create our own ‘receiving’ workflow for inbound goods so they can attach the packing slips to the receipt transactions. this then associated the pack slip image with the AP invoice through the Vendor/PO# "related documents’ feature in ECM. It’s real nice for our AP folks and saves time - it should be part of the delivered package.

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Yes, I agree

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Thanks for the input, Mike.

I always strive to aggregate as much into as few workflows as possible to eliminate the redundancies you’ve described as “substantial duplication”. There are often ways to incorporate different process streams into the same workflow, but not always.

Multi-level approvals seem to be a very common ask and one we have found different solutions for.

The Related Documents functionality definitely assists an AP Processor in confirming that the right packing slips are being assigned to the right invoice. The Custom method to do this is certainly a better approach to identifying these connections.

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