We are moving along with the automation of our AP Invoicing process and have finally gotten to the topics of email input into IDC. I just discussed things with our AP team and found out that many of our top vendors already email us invoices, but they lump all of them into one big PDF before sending it over to us…
After some brief emails with our consultant, I was informed that more training could be done with Classifications in order to split up these invoices into separate documents within IDC before sending them over to ECM.
Has this been successful for anyone else? A lot of our invoices tend to be 1-3 pages long, but we do occasionally receive ones that are longer. My first thought was also to request that our vendors send invoices as separate documents, but wasn’t sure if that request would get granted.
If anyone has any insight on this process, that would be greatly appreciated!
So if you don’t want to maintain yet another model you can use the split function in IDC and then restart the batch. I think in the newer version of IDC they even have it so that when you split it, it re-does the capture and verify.
IMO training another model on classification is more work sometimes than it’s worth.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your statement, but I have those documents trained in IDC to recognize the values based on the vendor, but when the vendor sends us a email with 3 different invoices combined into one PDF, IDC only recognizes it as one invoice and just takes the data it gathers from the first one. So in ECM, we only get one invoice.
Are you saying that you had a training session where you would create a batch with a document that includes multiple invoices in one and then split to train within the Data Verification step?
The last training I did was 2019. but that is how I remember it initially going. I will check with the AP trainer tomorrow. I did a couple of pdfs with multiple invoices tonight and I split them and they went thru to ECM as single invoices, but I could not find enough multi invoice pdfs to see if it would learn to split them.
So I found something tonight that I did not know. There are three levels of AP Automation. I could not find anything that showed what level our controller bought, but we are licensed for 48,000 documents a year and his goal was full automation.
It would not hurt to ask your vendors. I have made tweaks to our POs and invoices for our largest vendors to fit their automation systems because it helps our partnership run smoother.
I did a couple of pdfs with multiple invoices tonight and I split them and they went thru to ECM as single invoices, but I could not find enough multi invoice pdfs to see if it would learn to split them.
Ok, I’ll have to see if I can get it to learn to split!
It would not hurt to ask your vendors. I have made tweaks to our POs and invoices for our largest vendors to fit their automation systems because it helps our partnership run smoother.
Kind of figured it would come to this, just hoping the request will be granted and can be reliable!
@utaylor I’m drawing a blank on this - I checked in IDC and can’t find the SPLIT as it applies to documents, only in the field expressions. Can you elaborate and help an old man’s failing memory ?
Thansk! It’s the only place I didn’t look! But that isn’t automatic, only manual. I was hoping maybe we found something that would happen at the Email Input engine.
I have to check with AP, but I am hoping like everything else yo do in IDC that it would learn that. I am looking for the 9.3 release notes
From the 9.3 notes
• DocSeparator=on
o This misc parameter tells the system to learn from the user when there should be a break in the document due to a change in the field it has been applied to.
o For example, if an invoice number changes (meaning there’s a new invoice that’s shown up in the same document), the user would separate that invoice into another document as part of Data Verify. With the DocSeparator=on misc parameter set for the invoice number field, the system will learn based on the user’s training when there should be a document separation based on the invoice number.
The DocSeparator=on misc parameter can be applied to multiple fields. For example, you may wish to create document breaks any time there is a new PO number, or a change in vendor name. Following user training in Data Verify, the system will automatically separate documents based on changes in those fields when DocSeparator=on is configured for those fields.
@MikeGross Were you able to figure anything out? I’ve tried checking the “Enable document separation” box, but it doesn’t seem to be learning (maybe I just haven’t trained enough). Wondering if there is another spot to work with Document Separation besides here:
Or maybe I’m not supposed to be using “Check-based merge”? The other two options didn’t make much sense (“1 Document = 1 File” and “Fixed page count per document”).
It’s a misc parameter in the document form definition. So if you want the document to be separated on a change in invoice number, add a misc parameter on the invoice number field, and make that a doc separator.
I haven’t gotten around to implementing it yet. I’ve asked our folks to give me some feedback if they want me to turn it on. You know users - sometimes they get into a process and don’t want to change.
?
