We have been looking at AP invoice automation.3 way matching services, and wanted to see if anybody had some experiences they could share, or any thoughts.
Bluecreek software is one company that lists Epicor as a supported interface, so that means we do not have to build the interface ourselves (definitely a plus), so if anyone has experience with that integration, any experiences would be great to hear about.
If any other software has an Epicor interface already in existence, I would love to hear about it,
We had done one integration attempt with a third party, but the experience is a little off-putting, they have a lot of limitations that did not inform us of when we first investigated their software, ie, the inability to pay an invoice for more than the original PO quantity, even if the receipt quantity matched. They don’t have a concept of matching receipt lines either, they only have a concept of matching PO lines, which makes it a bit difficult to integrate smoothly with Epicor.
At my former employer we looked into AP automation and couldn’t justify the price. Here’s the process we came up with instead:
Start a group that will be used all month or open the existing group for that month.
Enter the invoice header info: PO Number, Invoice Number, Invoice Date and Total Amount.
Enter any additional charges like tax or freight.
Save and enter the next invoice leaving the variance of the line items.
Here’s where the customization comes in:
When they are done entering the invoices they move to a separate tab and enter a new AP group and press match. All the invoices in the current group are compared to open receipts and if the PO and total $ matches, the lines are created and the invoice is moved to the new group. Eventually you will start to get some old invoices in the group that don’t match. Those need to be investigated just like the would with any AP automation. My former employer claims that AP data entry only takes 20 seconds per invoice now, so it’s hard to beat that. There is the possibility of a mismatch on identical invoice totals on the same PO, but we decided that was OK.