SAP Inbound Invoice Management Solutions

SAP Vendor Invoice Management by OpenText (VIM)

Introduction
 

Say goodbye to the tedious manual entry of invoice data and welcome a new era of productivity. VIM not only saves you time but also reduces the risk of human error, ensuring accurate and consistent invoice processing. Imagine a world where your team can focus on strategic tasks, while routine invoicing operations are effortlessly managed by our automated system.

OpenText Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) works with SAP® ERP to streamline accounts payable (AP) operations. VIM optimizes and simplifies the process of receiving, managing, and monitoring invoices for AP personnel and vendors. Deloitte provides robust support teams to assist our clients in implementing the SAP OpenText Vendor Invoice Management solution.

The pursuit of a "no-touch" process, where invoices seamlessly progress from validation to posting, is a common goal for many companies. VIM stands out as the optimal software to meet this evolving expectation. With its extensive standard features, VIM facilitates the automation of invoice processing directly into SAP. Additionally, VIM empowers users to efficiently resolve exceptions within a minimal response/handling time.

Solution  Advantages

Discover the transformative advantages of integrating VIM into your business processes. From streamlined invoice processing to enhanced automation and swift exception resolution, VIM is designed to elevate efficiency, accuracy, and overall financial operations. Explore how this cutting-edge tool can be your key to unlocking a more streamlined and effective approach to managing invoices. 

• Full Process Automation: VIM's pivotal advantage lies in automating SAP's incoming invoice processes seamlessly, from receipt to posting. After capturing and validating data, items are automatically released for payment without manual intervention, unless specific exceptions are triggered.

• Streamlined Exception Resolution: Directing Discrepancies with Minimal Handling Time. Beyond the no-touch process, VIM facilitates a swift process for resolving invoices exceptions. Blocked items are routed to the relevant users based on assigned roles. Additionally, VIM offers records of common exceptions to enhance automation levels.

• Intuitive & User friendly: VIM provides an enhanced user experience with intuitive interfaces for end-users, managers, and administrators. Choose between the classic SAP GUI or the modern SAP Fiori interface, which is adaptable and caters to both desktop and mobile devices.

• Various Analytical Reports on Accruals: VIM offers diverse reporting capabilities, delivering analytical insights and key figures across work items, workflows, processes, agents, exception reasons, and inbound documents.
  With VIM Analytics, businesses can obtain comprehensive data reports on documents with exceptions and Invoice Exception workflows. This tool enables tracking of documents processed through SAP workflows by VIM or those without any VIM process. Monitor the current status, workflow, agent, and exception reason of specific invoices using VIM Analytics.

• Integration: VIM excels not just in its features but also in its ability to seamlessly integrate with diverse solutions. Its flexibility ensures smooth collaboration with ERP systems, third-party applications, and other enterprise solutions, streamlining workflows and optimizing system efficiency.

• Custom solutions: In instances where the standard solution is unable to address a specific and unique business process, VIM empowers users to tailor their approach, ensuring adaptability and flexibility in handling diverse scenarios. This flexibility enhances the system's compatibility with less conventional processes and underscores VIM's commitment to providing tailored solutions for every business need.

How does it work?

The diagram below illustrates the VIM process for managing incoming invoices, depicting the journey from receiving the invoice to its final release to the finance team for payment. 

• Invoice Receipt: VIM process is triggered upon receiving invoices in various formats (e.g., PDF, XML, Paper) through multiple channels. In this initial step, invoices are prepared as a prerequisite for the Transform Invoice process, eliminating paper invoices at the earliest stage.
• Invoice Transformation: At this stage, invoices undergo Optical Character Recognition (OCR) using advanced capabilities to extract invoice details and eliminate human intervention in the invoice transformation process. The OCR software has Machine Learning capabilities to ensure no invoice details are being left out after the software is trained.
• Invoice Verification & Completion: Validate the invoice details which were captured in the previous step before entering the invoice to SAP systems. This is where the human factor can teach the software what to capture and from where to capture it.
• Invoice Exception Handling: Predefined business rules swiftly determine if an invoice can be posted without human intervention or if there are exceptions to address. VIM enables users to efficiently resolve invoice exceptions and discrepancies through its automated workflows.
• Invoice Approval: Substitute the traditional signature process with an automated approval workflow, configurable for the 2-eye principle. Extend this workflow to an unlimited number of approvers based on predefined factors, such as invoice amount. It meticulously records each step taken toward invoice posting, including the performer and their comments.

Embracing the Digital Wave: The Rise of E-Invoicing

In today's fast-paced business landscape, the shift toward E-invoicing is gaining momentum, with the European Union signaling its intent to transition to electronic invoicing in the near future. E-invoicing, the electronic exchange of invoices between businesses, presents a transformative approach to financial transactions, offering numerous advantages over traditional invoicing methods.

Advantages of E-Invoicing:

E-invoicing streamlines the entire invoicing process, eliminating the need for paper-based transactions. This eco-friendly approach not only reduces environmental impact but also enhances efficiency and cost-effectiveness for businesses. Automation in invoice creation, delivery, and processing minimizes errors and accelerates payment cycles, fostering better cash flow management. Furthermore, E-invoicing promotes transparency, providing a real-time view of financial transactions and reducing the risk of fraud.

EU's Drive Toward E-Invoicing:

Recognizing the potential benefits, the European Union is actively encouraging the adoption of E-invoicing as part of its digital agenda. The intent is to create a standardized and interoperable framework for electronic invoicing across member states, aiming to simplify cross-border transactions and enhance the overall efficiency of financial operations.

Integration with VIM:

In this era of digital transformation, OpenText Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) stands out as a versatile solution that seamlessly integrates with E-invoicing platforms. VIM not only adapts to evolving business needs but also enhances the efficiency of E-invoicing processes. By integrating VIM with E-invoicing solutions, businesses can further automate invoice handling, reduce manual intervention, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. The collaboration between VIM and E-invoicing empowers organizations to navigate the complexities of modern financial transactions with confidence.

As we move toward a more digitally driven future, the synergy between E-invoicing and VIM emerges as a powerful catalyst for organizations seeking to streamline their financial processes and stay ahead in the dynamic business landscape.
 

SAP Ariba Central Invoice Management (CIM)

SAP Ariba Central Invoice Management provides a central invoice management system for S4 public cloud. SAP Ariba Central Invoice Management is integrated with SAP S/4HANA Cloud systems using SAP BTP technologies to provide an interface supporting businesses in managing invoices in a central invoice management. Deloitte provides experienced teams to assist our clients in implementing and integrating the SAP Ariba Central Invoice Management solution to S4/HANA public cloud.
 

Introduction

This section is addressing SAP Central Invoice Management, which is recommended for Invoice Processing in the public edition of S/4HANA Cloud.

Discover the extensive features of CIM specifically designed to increase the efficiency of businesses invoicing. Trust the technology to empower a unified solution for receiving and managing supplier invoices, with connection to multiple systems and enabling the processing of invoices across various inbound channels.

The use of such OCR capabilities and robotic process automation facilitates touchless, automated handling of paper-based and PDF e-mail invoices. In addition, CIM provides seamless navigation to organizing system for workflow tasks and edit, where filtering for priority invoices is simplified.

By implementing an automated system that extracts structured information, your company can easily record invoices and use a consolidated view of all invoices across various ERP systems, substantially minimizing manual tasks.

Solution Advantages

Be brought to light on the diverse benefits of integrating CIM into your business processes. Besides enhanced automation, CIM intents to advance efficiency, visibility, and compliance. Explore how this avant-garde Cloud interface can support your businesses of managing invoices:

• Efficiency: Processing invoices more quickly and accurately to pay invoices on time, thanks to intelligent technologies

• Achieve greater automation freeing resources for other activities, using cloud-native, embedded optical character recognition, SAP Intelligent Robotic process automation to process invoices received by e-mail.

• Visibility: CIM provides real-time visibility into the account payable process, allowing organizations to track the status of invoices and identify bottlenecks or issues.

• Compliance: CIM helps organization ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and internal policies by enforcing approval workflows and providing audit trails.

• Integration: The solution integrates with SAP Ariba Network facilitating connection to an extensive network of suppliers and buyers for easier collaboration and transactions.

• Seamless navigation: CIM also provide the feature of displaying invoice attachments in a split screen and the ability to navigate to SAP Fiori apps or SAP GUI transactions, which can enhance visibility and streamline the invoice processing workflow.

How does it work?

The high-level end-to-end invoice process flow includes:

1. Receive through inbound channel.
2. Transform through embedded OCR processing.
3. Verify and complete with automatic invoice line-item creation, configured rules.
4. If necessary, manual correction, manage exceptions natively and seamlessly using an intuitive user interface.
5. Approve through a central approval inbox for all workflow items supporting attachments, showing approval history and possibility to set up substitution rules.
6. Pay.