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Benefits of AP Document Recognition

AP Document Recognition streamlines processing of vendor bills that you receive in PDF format. AP Clerks spend less time re-typing data so they can focus on higher value tasks. 

  • Worker productivity: spend less time entering documents
  • Accuracy: reduce data entry errors which may result in incorrect vendor payments
  • Approvals: integrate with existing approval and workflow processes
  • AI/ML: extracted data accuracy (vendor ID field) improves after manual correction

Who can use AP Document Recognition?

Prior to April 1, 2023 Acumatica offered a promotion for up to 1,000 pages/month for free. After the first year, customers could purchase the feature.

Starting April 1, 2023 all new and existing Acumatica subscription customers (does not include perpetual licenses - PCP) get 50 free pages so they can try the feature. Customers who already paid for the service get an additional 50 free pages. A vendor bill with a front and a back counts towards 2 of your 50 monthly pages.

How can I get Started?

Contact your Acumatica partner to implement the feature or follow the instructions in Acumatica Help if you have experience implementing features in Acumatica.

More Information

There are 3 ways to send vendors bills to the Recognition Service.

  1. Utilize a special mailbox so you can forward vendor emails with attached PDF documents for automated processing. (watch 1.5 minute video)
  2. Initiate AP Document Recognition directly from Outlook or Gmail using the appropriate plugin. This requires purchasing the Outlook and Gmail plugins feature.
  3. Drag and drop vendor bills to the Incoming Documents screen and initiate the process manually.

You can watch a general 3.5 minute video with more information which shows how recognized documents can automatically be matched to purchase orders.

Want to learn on a demonstration site?

Utilize the sample PDF bills attached to this post to test the process on a non-production site. Use Acumatica SalesDemo data so the vendors and inventory items are already available. If you build a new site or restore a snapshot make sure you rebuild the full-text entity index before processing documents.

Summary of recognition methods

 

 

Bill Processing flow using AP Document Recognition

 

HI @Doug Johnson   Not sure if you can help but figured I would ask.  We started using the Incoming Document in our UK/EUR tenant.  The document was recognized fine.  Works very well and have started rolling out.  However,  we have an issue when creating the UK/EUR bill.  The below error occurs about the currency.  I have seen this issue before related the currency effective date which I check so it was not the issue.   Any ideas.  See screenshot below.  I have asked our VAR Klear to add Support ticket.  I have tenants that use MXN, BRL EURO and GBP.

I appreciate your support and time.

 

 


Hi, @Doug Johnson 

As a UK partner we are looking forward to AP Document Recognition being supported and available.  I notice with interest that EVANG posted an invoice with the European date format without an issue.  

Do you have any idea when this module will be released for the UK because?

Thank you in advance. 


@martin52 we are investigating UK recognition for 2023 R2. 

@EvanG not sure what your specific setup looks like - I would suggest following up with a support case. Make sure you can enter an AP Bill directly via screen entry using all the same information that was recognized.


@Doug Johnson   Thank you for your reply.  We don’t have an issue with entering bill directly in the AP Bill screen.  Our VAR Klear has opened a support case on this issue. @laurab85 

@EvanG 


Hello, I just thought I can ask here - is there any palns to bring projects field to the Incoming Documents screen? Tasks, costs codes, etc. would be great too. It’s pretty important for contsruction companies. Thanks, Felix


@fsemin80  please see the suggestion here: https://community.acumatica.com/ideas/ap-document-recognition-add-fields-such-as-project-to-incoming-document-screen-5275.

 


@Doug Johnson We have AP Bills with multiple lines in the detail section that are posting to the GL and project transactions with multiple lines also.  We want these bills to post in summary instead of posting all all lines in the detail.  What settings do we need to change to make this happen? 


@arose We do not currently support posting a summary. This would be a future development effort. If you plan to customize this, then consider that some detail lines may have different GL accounts and projects.


We have a medical equipment supplier asking whether we can recognize landed costs to a purchase receipt of a lot tracked item using the AP automation capabilities. Ideally, they would like to have the freight cost invoiced from the freight carrier, have AP automation and doc recognition read the freight invoice, create the landed cost document against the purchase receipt and create the AP bill to the freight vendor.

Is this possible? It appears the AP automation can create the bill to the carrier referencing the purchase receipt. Does this also handle the landed cost document side so the inventory cost is updated?


@dgodsill97 - entered to Ideas portal here, please vote for it 🙂

 


@Doug Johnson is it possible to have the recognition engine bypass recognition of the details and just create the header? The case is some clients specifically in construction do not enter the AP Bills line by line as it requires quite bit of data entry for project coding instead they enter single line (mostly bills go to a project, Task, … ) 

currently I have an instance that the AP person after recognition deletes all lines and add one line

a checkbox indicating recognition of lines or not when recognizing the document is great. It also can be setting so each client can set their default in a preference screen then toggle it at the time of recognition as needed


@Doug Johnson is it possible to have the recognition engine bypass recognition of the details and just create the header? The case is some clients specifically in construction do not enter the AP Bills line by line as it requires quite bit of data entry for project coding instead they enter single line (mostly bills go to a project, Task, … ) 

currently I have an instance that the AP person after recognition deletes all lines and add one line

a checkbox indicating recognition of lines or not when recognizing the document is great. It also can be setting so each client can set their default in a preference screen then toggle it at the time of recognition as needed

 

We have had this as well.  The details weren’t relevant, they just wanted the totals.


Does the AP Doc process work now in South Africa


We have been using the service about 18 mos with varying success. I’ll say there has been zero continued development on this product from what I can tell. It has many small bugs that prevent it from being the game changer we had hoped. 
 

In the last month the AI engine seems to be failing. Our two highest volume vendors’ invoices are no longer mapping at all in the system. Our VAR has opened a case and has no resolution after 3 weeks.

Is anyone else having issues lately? Does Acumatica have any plans to improve this product?


Here are the issues we are seeing, let me know if you have any feedback.

Incoming Documents UOM Issues


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