Use this page to learn more about how to setup Supplier Invoice Workflow with respect to:
Images can be attached to invoices in the Supplier Invoice Workflow by using functionality in Document Management.
There are two possible import scenarios, File Based and Message Based, that require some steps to setup. There are also some common configurations that must be in place for either of the two scenarios to work properly.
An appropriate Document Class must be created in Document Management, e.g. named as INVOICE.
Depending on the decision, it might be necessary to create a new Repository or to connect the chosen Document Class to an existing Repository. This is standard Document Management setup and detailed instructions can be found in the Document Management documentation
Having performed this basic setup, next step will be to decide which one of the two Invoice Image import scenarios to be supported. The scenarios are referred to as File Based import and Message Based import of images.
File Based import is used as a result of scanning and interpreting paper invoices. The scanning process results in one (or several) files with invoice data and one image file for each scanned invoice. The data file must contain a reference to an image file for each invoice in the file. More information is found in Setup File Based Import section.
Message Based import can be performed when receiving supplier invoices through EDI or Web Services, i.e. through the ITS-component. More information is found in the Setup Message Based Import section.
Scanning of paper invoices results in files containing invoice data as well as one image file per each scanned invoice. To import these image files into the application, the first issue is to decide how to store the image files. The import process supports Shared Directory and FTP Server as source options.
Using a Shared Directory as Source Directory
Using a FTP Directory as Source Directory
E.g. myFtpServer, 21 and mySourceDir for ftp://myFtpServer/mySourceDir
Any directory name will be ignored and only the filename will be used.
E.g. specifying the reference imagefile.ext or <any path>\sourcedir\imagefile.ext leads to the sam, the program will expect to find the file ftp://myFtpServer/mySourceDir/imagefile.ext
This setup is used when sending invoices via EDI and Web Services as e.g. ITS. For these cases the invoices will be kept in the External Supplier Invoice interface prior to creation. These External Supplier Invoices must be connected to a Load Type, defined in External Supplier Invoice Parameters window.
It is now possible to automatically attach an invoice document to this type of invoices by selecting the Create Image checkbox and activate the scheduled task Check in Invoice Report Document for your company.
Note: The document that will be created in this case is of course not the original invoice since it only exists in electronic form, i.e. as ADI or ITS info. What happens is that a PDF-report in a default supplier invoice layout is created, checked in and attached to the invoice. The document is a suggested picture of what the original invoice might look like if it existed in paper format
All users or roles that will be using the Supplier Invoice Workflow must have the Supplier Invoice Workflow User (SINWOF_USER) role granted to be able to check in documents into Document Management.
The Supplier Invoice Workflow component defines a number of events,
| Event | Description |
|---|---|
| Notify New Invoices | A message is sent to authorizer(s), notifying that a new invoice is created |
| Notify Invoices Due | A message sent to a dedicated user, notifying that there are unauthorized invoices approaching due date |
| Notify Authorizer Invoices Due | A message sent to the authorizer of an unauthorized invoice, notifying that the invoice is due for payment within a specified number of days. |
| Notify Next Authorizer | A message sent to the person that is next in turn to authorize his or her part of a posting proposal |
| Notify Wrong Authorizer State | A message sent to a dedicated user, notifying that there are invoices with posting proposal lines where the status is set to Wrong Authorizer |
| Notify Waiting State | A message intended to notify authorizers that there are invoices with posting proposal lines in Waiting state that are due for payment in a specified number of days |
| Notify Unbalanced Invoices | A message is sent to authorizer(s) of unbalanced posting proposal. If the company uses consecutive authorization as the authorization routing method, the next authorizer will receive the notification. If the company uses parallel authorization as the authorization routing method, all the authorizers connected to the posting proposal will receive the notification. |
To configure events, use Solution Manager in IFS Enterprise Explorer.
Note: At least one of event action must be Enabled to trigger the event.
As opposed to traditional events that are sent as soon as something occurs, these events are more like a to-do list that will be compiled on a regular basis (typically once every 24 hours).
To schedule the event-processing, navigate to the My Administration \ Scheduled Tasks and choose New Database Task Schedule.
Choose Task Name by using the List of Values and locate the task.
Note: There is available one task per event. Schedule one task for each company that you want to monitor.
The concept of security checkpoints is introduced to ensure that critical flows and functions are completed intentionally and by the same user as originally logged into IFS Applications.
The idea is to preventing "coffee break and computer left unlocked” type security problems and also gives the user a chance to think through and cancel invalid actions like e.g. wrong button click.
Supplier Invoice Workflow supports the Security Checkpoint concept to authenticate Authorizers and Acknowledgers when authorizing or acknowledging posting proposals. The triggered checkpoint that is used when doing authorization or acknowledging on an individual invoice is called SINWOF_INVOICE_AUTHORIZING. For authorization or acknowledging on multiple invoices, if Multi Authorize checkbox is selected for the authorizer in Financials \ Supplier Invoice \ Invoice Workflow Basic Data \ Invoice Posting Authorizer, then use checkpoint SINWOF_MULTI_AUTHORIZING.
To enable security checkpoint functionality in the Supplier Invoice Workflow, the following settings must be specified in Solution Manager \ Security \ Security Checkpoints \ Security Checkpoints
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| State | On |
| Method | Password |
| Type | Simple |
Please refer to Security Checkpoint Administration documentation.
Also make sure that the checkpoint(s) SINWOF_INVOICE_AUTHORIZING/SINWOF_MULTI_AUTHORIZING is marked as Active
To fully use the Supplier Invoice Workflow functionality, the following software requirements apply,
Viewer to use is of course dependent on file format produced by the scanning tool. A common file format is the TIFF format and there is a good chance that a TIFF viewer is already installed on the Windows OS.