EMC CAPTIVA INVOICE CAPTURE

Transcription

1 EMC CAPTIVA INVOICE CAPTURE AUTOMATING THE CAPTURE OF INVOICES AND DELIVERY TO SAP ABSTRACT This white paper provides a technical overview of the EMC Captiva Invoice Capture, including details on how Captiva interfaces with content repositories and Accounts Payables systems from vendors like SAP. March 2014 EMC WHITE PAPER

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT... 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS... 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY... 3 OVERVIEW... 3 INVOICE CAPTURE AUTOMATION AND PROCESS FLOW... 3 EMC CAPTIVA INTEGRATION WITH SAP... 4 Invoice data (Captiva Invoice Capture for SAP)... 4 Invoice images (Captiva Archive Export for SAP and standard image exports)... 5 CAPTIVA A/P CONNECT FOR SAP... 6 CAPTIVA ARCHIVE EXPORT FOR SAP... 6 CONCLUSION... 8 References... 9 CONTACT US

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY While many of our paper-driven processes have become electronic, studies show that paper use remains constant and in some cases continues to grow. Accounts Payable (A/P) is no exception. With invoices often coming from hundreds of different vendors and data needing to be entered into other systems to facilitate the approval and payment, paper invoices pose a significant challenge for an organization s A/P department. This white paper provides a technical overview of the EMC Captiva invoice capture solution, including details on how Captiva interfaces with content repositories and A/P systems from vendors like SAP. OVERVIEW EMC Captiva Invoice Capture is a customizable invoice capture solution that captures and identifies vendor invoices, automatically extracts the key data, and validates the business data based on business rules before exporting (updating) into enterprise content management (ECM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and other back-office systems for processing. Built on the EMC Captiva Capture platform and using EMC Captiva Advanced Recognition s intelligent document recognition technology, EMC Captiva Invoice Capture identifies incoming documents as invoices and immediately begins extracting information such as purchase order number, invoice date, total amounts, line item data, and more for recurrent and nonrecurrent vendors. EMC Captiva Invoice Capture automatically compares and validates the invoice information against purchase order and vendor data, and also includes the ability to match invoice line items to line items on the purchase order, or assign the costs directly to general ledger (G/L) accounts. Completed invoices are then exported to the A/P or ERP system where they appear as "parked" invoices, ready to be processed via the workflow or paid directly, without further processing. The captured data is then released into ERP, A/P, and other back-office systems. EMC Captiva Invoice Capture is a flexible solution that can dramatically reduce the amount of manual intervention typically required to process invoices. It empowers companies to streamline and accelerate the processing of invoices, reduce errors, and increase financial reporting accuracy. By accelerating invoice processing through automation, organizations can realize immediate benefits and a return on investment in the form of less manual data entry, discounts for early payments, and elimination of penalties for invoices paid late. INVOICE CAPTURE AUTOMATION AND PROCESS FLOW EMC Captiva Invoice Capture controls the flow of invoices from scanning to export. The key steps in the process include the following: Capture: Interfaces with hundreds of scanners leveraging the EMC Captiva ISIS technology and works with multi-function peripheral devices and network scanners. For those distributed capture environments, a Web-based interface for scanning and indexing is utilized. Documents are also captured from s, network folders, and other sources, providing organizations with many document input options. Image quality enhancement: Once invoices have been captured, they undergo a rigorous, fully automated image cleanup process providing deskew, halftone removal, dilation, and noise removal filters, which prepares the image for document classification and data extraction. Document classification: EMC Captiva s intelligent classification technology employs image and text-based analysis to identify vendor invoices, purchase orders, credit memos, and other document types common in the accounts payable process. Frequent vendor invoices are identified based on their logos or any other graphic or text characteristics, and invoices from less frequent vendors (including new and one-off vendors), are identified based on invoice data such as purchase order number and vendor ID. Data extraction: Invoice data is captured from new and one-time vendors using zonal data extraction, free-form data extraction, and rubber banding for quick data extraction. Recognition technologies support the capture of data from invoices for multiple languages including English, French, German, Italian, and several others. 3 Validation: Extracted data is automatically validated against purchase order and vendor data from the A/P system. Invoice line items that match with purchase order line items can be automatically linked, including automatic correction of common unit of measure and unit price discrepancies. Problem invoices and new vendor invoices are routed to special handling queues.

4 Export: Images and invoice data are delivered to virtually any A/P, ECM, ERP, database, workflow, or other system, including EMC Documentum Content Server, SAP ECC, Microsoft SharePoint, and others. The EMC Captiva Invoice Capture Export architecture is specifically designed to facilitate data interchange with A/P and ERP systems and EMC Captiva Archive Export ensures that the invoice images are delivered to the image repository in an easy, yet efficient way. Figure 1. Default invoice capture process flow EMC CAPTIVA INTEGRATION WITH SAP EMC Captiva's certified support for SAP provides two areas of integration: Invoice data (Captiva Invoice Capture for SAP) Vendor, purchase orders (PO), and G/L data is periodically downloaded from SAP to a cache database (Microsoft SQL Server). This allows for automatic vendor and PO matching. A direct "real time" connection to SAP is possible; however, from EMC Captiva's experience, customers prefer a more decoupled integration. Invoice data is exported to SAP using BAPI. This provides a seamless data transfer, parking invoices in SAP for custom processing via an SAP workflow, and removing the need for manual data entry into SAP. 4

5 Invoice images (Captiva Archive Export for SAP and standard image exports) Invoice images are exported to an SAP HTTP Content Server compatible image repository using ArchiveLink. This provides a seamless transfer, linking images to invoice data previously exported to SAP. Alternatively, one of EMC Captiva's standard image exports may be used to seamlessly transfer images and data to the required enterprise content management system. EMC Captiva integrates with Documentum, ApplicationXtender for Microsoft SharePoint, and many other content repositories. The following is a summary of the integration with SAP. EMC Captiva Capture supports multiple versions of SAP: EMC Captiva Invoice Capture ensures exported data integrity by specifying the SAP version, to handle differences in versions. Note: SAP 4.7 is no longer supported. The two currently supported versions of SAP are: SAP ECC 5.0, SAP ECC 6.0 EMC Captiva Invoice Capture uses invoice data from SAP, including vendor information, purchase orders, G/L accounts, cost centers, and accounting periods, to validate the data captured on the invoice and ensures that the invoice lines are matched to the correct purchase order or G/L account. EMC Captiva Invoice Capture leverages vendor information from SAP to ensure that the vendor information automatically captured on the invoice is correct. If for some reason the vendor information was not captured, the operator can launch a Vendor pick list that displays the vendor information from SAP. Tax codes, which represent tax types, are required for writing invoices to an SAP accounting system. The tax code types, such as sales or income, have associated tax rates. The EMC Captiva Invoice Capture application populates the Invoice Tax Code and the line item Tax Code fields based on the tax rate. Integration is extensible: Additional parameters are available to customize field mappings to fit additional business requirements that may not be defined in an SAP system. Integration with SAP supports exporting one-time vendors to SAP. From the Validation step, operators route invoices from one-time vendors to the Wait Vendor Queue step for special handling. Integration with SAP supports partial fulfillment of invoices and credit memos. Once the invoice data has been delivered into SAP, users can view the invoice images linked to the invoice data. Figure 2. Overview of invoice capture process flow showing where data is validated and information is delivered 5

6 CAPTIVA A/P CONNECT FOR SAP Included with EMC Captiva Invoice Capture is the EMC Captiva Invoice Capture Export module. The EMC Captiva Invoice Capture Export module provides tight connectivity between EMC Captiva and an SAP ECC accounting system or other ODBC-compliant accounting system. This connectivity includes the ability for vendor and purchase order (PO) data to be periodically downloaded from the SAP system and used for field look-up and validation purposes. The captured and validated invoice data, in turn, is periodically posted back into the SAP ECC system for further processing and reconciliation. When the data is successfully parked in an SAP accounting system for further review, the SAP system returns the Document ID value. The Document ID value is written out by the export process to the Invoice_ObjectID IA Value and used by Archive Export for archiving images to the SAP system. To validate the captured invoice data, InputAccel for Invoices downloads the vendor, PO, cost center, and G/L account information from SAP ECC during "off-hours" using BAPI API calls and stores this information locally to EMC Captiva Invoice Capture. Specific calls include: BAPI_COMPANYCODE_GETLIST BAPI_GL_ACC_GETLIST BAPI_PO_GETITEMS BAPI_VENDOR_FIND BAPI_VENDOR_GETDETAIL BAPI_COSTCENTER_GETDETAIL1 During validation, EMC Captiva Invoice Capture validates the captured invoice data using the information retrieved from SAP. Additionally, the validation operator will match PO line items to invoice items, and/or assign G/L accounts. This matching is done prior to export in order for the captured invoice data to be accepted by SAP as an invoice document. Upon export, the captured and validated invoice data will be delivered to SAP ECC using BAPI_INCOMINGINVOICE_PARK and BAPI_TRANSACTION_COMMIT. The resulting parked invoices will then be available for further processing by an SAP Workflow, or by a user accessing the list of parked invoices through SAP's user interface. CAPTIVA ARCHIVE EXPORT FOR SAP Using the EMC Captiva Archive Export for SAP, invoice images and data are exported to an ArchiveLink-compatible image repository using the SAP Content Server HTTP Interface and administrative data (metadata) from Captiva Capture Values to an SAP system on the SAP ArchiveLink interface. Both early and late archiving are supported. If the EMC Captiva Archive Export module is configured with a BAPI call for the Late Archiving mode, then only a small amount of data is sent to the SAP system that links the existing invoice data to the image on the content server. If the EMC Captiva Archive Export module is configured for the Early Archiving mode, then all of the name-value pairs defined in the index catalog are transferred to the SAP system. The EMC Captiva Archive Export module is a separate InputAccel product with its own documentation. Late archiving is the recommended methodology when exporting both image and invoice data. In this case, EMC Captiva Invoice Capture calls ARCHIVE_BARCODE_GLOBAL to associate a barcode with the parked invoice and then uses BAPI_BARCODE_SENDLIST to associate the image sent to the content server with the parked invoice. If early archiving is used, then EMC Captiva Invoice Capture will call ARCHIV_PROCESS_RFCINPUT to send invoice information as name-value pairs and also associate it with an image stored in a content repository. It is important to note that when using early archiving, the name-value pairs will not show up as an invoice document in SAP unless additional ABAP code is written by the customer in the USEREXIT event for ARCHIV PROCESS RFCINPUT. In the case of late archiving, captured data is not exported; instead late archiving only sends the image to a content repository and sends a small amount of information to the SAP ECC system to link the image to the already existing business object data that was stored in the database earlier. The repository server for this configuration consists of: 6

7 SAP system that has been configured with the SAP ArchiveLink interface Content server (for example, Documentum) that has been configured with the SAP HTTP Content Server Interface, version 4.5 Captiva Archive Export for SAP Captiva A/P Connect for SAP (optional) Figure 3. How Captiva, SAP, and content server components interrelate The Captiva Archive Export for SAP module provides the following capabilities: Exports captured data to an SAP system Captiva Archive Export enables you to populate an SAP system with content and administrative data. Administrative data (indexing and other metadata) is stored on SAP ECC 5.0/6.0 NetWeaver 7. Content (captured images from your pages and other binary data) is stored in a separate repository called a content server (for example, Documentum) via the SAP HTTP Content Server Interface. Content servers from third parties that support the SAP HTTP Content Server Interface can be used in this configuration. Supports early and late archiving modes If you are doing early archiving, administrative data is exported to the SAP ECC 5.0/6.0 NetWeaver 7 system via the SAP ArchiveLink interface. In the case of late archiving, administrative data has already been stored in the SAP system by traditional SAP data entry methods. Content (captured images and other binary data) is exported to the content server via its SAP HTTP Content Server Interface together with data that uniquely identifies the content and associates it with its corresponding administrative data that has already been stored in the SAP system. The content server uses data to locate the SAP document via its DocID. Exports content first, followed by administrative data The Captiva Archive Export always exports its image data first, and then checks to see if the export to the content server was successful. Only if content export was successful does the module then export the administrative data. After exporting the administrative data, the module checks to see if the export to the SAP system was successful. If it was not successful, the module rolls back the content export, removing the task's image data from the content server. 7

8 Maps index fields During setup of the export, Archive Export enables you to specify and assign Captiva Capture values to SAP index values for each document definition. Exports single- and multi-page images as well as non-image data Archive Export can convert images it exports into a variety of file types, color formats, and compression settings. The EMC Captiva Capture administrator specifies the image settings during module instance setup. In addition to image data, the module can export non-image data without conversion. In this case, the module passes through the data without attempting to perform any type of conversion. For both image and non-image data, the module can also specify a MIME type. Uses Captiva Capture values to control many module settings To reduce the need for frequent changes to your captureflow processes (XPPs), Archive Export can use Captiva Capture values selected during setup of the module to automatically configure many export parameters. During production, many InputAccel values are automatically populated with important data such as dates, times, image characteristics, operator names, and so forth. Other Captiva Capture values may be populated during classification and data extraction steps. CONCLUSION EMC Captiva s invoice capture solution significantly improves the invoice capture and approval process, and is designed to interface with content repositories and A/P systems from vendors like SAP. Using EMC Captiva to automate the capture and processing of invoice data eliminates nearly all manual data entry, improves data accuracy, frees valuable A/P resources, and dramatically speeds up invoice processing. A/P departments often find that they can reduce the time to process invoices from several weeks down to a few days or less. EMC Captiva intelligent enterprise capture solutions can also extend the value of capturing business documents that go beyond paper invoices. EMC Captiva solutions also address the challenges of processing healthcare or property and casualty claims forms, mortgage and consumer loan applications, new account applications, and many other types of documents. If there is paper in your business, intelligent enterprise capture provides real, measurable value: eliminating the cost to process paper documents and dramatically reducing cycle times. In the end, your paper is no longer a liability; it s a valuable asset that you can leverage for business advantage. 8

9 References Find out more about EMC Captiva intelligent enterprise capture solutions at CONTACT US To learn more about how EMC products, services, and solutions can help solve your business and IT challenges, contact your local representative or authorized reseller or visit us at Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. The information in this publication is provided as is. EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com. EMC2, EMC, the EMC logo, and the RSA logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. VMware is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Published in the USA. 03/14 White Paper H