Invoice Status Service

Transcription

1 Invoice Status Service Supplier Service Briefing Version: Date: November, 2013

2 1. Introduction This document describes how the OB10 Invoice Status Service works as well as the key features and functionality. 2. Invoice Status Service Overview If your customers utilise the OB10 Invoice Status Service (ISS), you will have online access 24x7 to the processing and payment status of your invoices. ISS does not require that you submit your invoices electronically via the OB10 Network. You can use other methods to submit invoices such as EDI, paper, fax and . Regardless of your submission method, ISS can provide you with pertinent information from the time your customer receives your invoice through to the conclusion of your customer s approval and payment process. If you submit your invoices via the OB10 Network, we will begin tracking the status of your invoice as soon as we accept it for delivery to your customer. The invoice status service provides you with multiple ways of reviewing invoice status: Query details about a specific invoice or a group of related invoices Display a graphical summary of all of your active invoices Create, display and download a report on your invoices 2.1. Invoice Status Information We process invoice status information differently depending on how the invoice was submitted to your customer. When we receive invoice status information for invoices that were submitted via the OB10 Network, we automatically link the status information to the invoice data record that was stored in our database when the invoice was submitted. When we receive the initial invoice status update for invoices that were submitted via other methods than OB10 (e.g., such as paper, EDI, etc.), we create and store an invoice data record in our database and populate the data record with basic invoice information (if provided by your customer), ideally including all of the following information: Invoice amount (gross) Invoice date Invoice currency PO reference (if applicable) Invoice to (based on the OB10 profile of the customer who provided the status information) Invoice from (based on your OB10 profile) When we receive invoice status updates from your customer, we will categorise each invoice (Based on your customer s specific invoice processing and payment statuses) into one of our five standard statuses, as follows: Received: Your customer has received the invoice and is working on it Approved: Your customer has approved the invoice for payment Paid: Your customer has paid the invoice

3 Exception: The invoice requires manual processing because of one or more exceptions to your customer s invoice processing business rules Rejected: The invoice has been rejected by your customers for one or more reasons While each of these statuses provides a high level answer to your basic invoice status query, in some cases the high level status may not provide you with enough details to answer all of your questions. For example: For Rejected or Exception statuses, you will want to know why your customer rejected the invoice or why they have diverted it for exception processing and what steps, if any you need to take to help resolve the problem. For Approved or Paid statuses, you will want to know when you will be paid or how you will be paid (e.g. cheque, bank transfer, etc.). To minimise the need for you to send s or to telephone your customer to answer these types of questions, your customer can include additional supplemental invoice status information, including: A free-form "invoice status comment" field. The scheduled payment date. A payment reference (e.g. remittance advice reference). Additional optional fields containing more invoice approval and payment information The additional fields of invoice status information can be used to: Document the specific problem or problems that caused an invoice to be rejected or scheduled for exception processing, enabling you to take action to help resolve the issue Provide additional information enabling you to expedite the posting of the payment (for example - payment date, deduction amount or remittance advice references, etc.) Identify an internal invoice identifier or your customer s internal contact in order to speed up any subsequent actions that you might need to take 3. Status Notification & Inquiry Your OB10 Portal account provides visibility to your invoice status. You can utilise a self-service process to easily register for an OB10 Portal account. Depending on the level of service you activate, you may use your OB10 account only for the Invoice Status Service or you may also use your OB10 account for other services such as the OB10 e-invoicing Service. After logging into your OB10 account, you will use one of three ways to check the status of an invoice, as follows: Query a specific invoice or a group of related invoices (for example, based on a PO reference) Query all invoices. Run a report on Invoices Submitted.

4 For a specific invoice: You can enter the invoice number. We retrieve the invoice details and provide you with the current status of your invoice. The following is an example: The invoice status query display shows: Key invoice data that is displayed in the top half of the display. For invoices submitted via OB10, this data is automatically extracted from the OB10 database. For invoices submitted via other methods, your customer will provide the key invoice data when they update our records.. The invoice status (in this case Approved ). The optional supplemental invoice status information your customer provided (in this example; a general status comment, the payment date, a status message, the delivery method, the contact and a general reference). In addition, we provide a general explanation of the typical invoice approval workflow process and identify the current status by highlighting the relevant step in bold text (in this case, Approved ). Note that in addition to querying a specific invoice, you can enter a purchase order reference or you can use an * sign as a wild card symbol. For example entering SST* and then invoking the query function will return a list of all invoices beginning with SST. If you enter a purchase order reference, we will find the single invoice related to the purchase order or will display a list of invoices if you submitted more than one invoice with the relevant purchase order reference.

5 For all invoices: You select the Invoice Status function. We display a graphic showing the status of all of your active invoices and a tabular listing displaying key data elements for each individual invoice. The following is an example: By default, we will display a list of active invoices submitted during the last 90 days. You can modify this display by choosing a different period of time. Additionally, once an invoice has been paid and you have posted the payment, you may choose to remove the invoice as an actively tracked invoice; you can use the Untrack function to perform this action. For an Invoices Submitted Report : You can also use the OB10 reporting functionality to check on invoice status for all of your invoices or a subset of your invoices. The report can be filtered in a variety of ways: by date range, by customer, by status, etc. You can run a report on all invoices in all statuses or you can run reports that are relevant to a user s specific work responsibilities. For example, your credit and collections staff might filter

6 reports to show any exception or rejected invoices: thereby enabling them to focus their follow up where they can be most effective in resolving the any issue that is preventing your customer from approving your invoices for payment. Your cash management staff might filter reports to show approved invoices (and payment dates) and/or paid invoices. The following is an example report that lists the invoices in the status of Approved. When you click the invoice status (e.g. Approved in this case), the report manager service displays any supplemental information your customer provided (in this case, an explanation that for invoice SST it was paid via ACH, the bank and account number receiving the funds and the contact at the customer). You can also export the report data in either Excel or CSV format if you wish to download the report to your local system. 4. Registering for the Invoice Status Service If you are activated for the e-invoicing service, you will automatically have an OB10 Portal account with access to the Invoice Status Service; no further registration or service activation will be required. If you submit invoices to your customers via other methods, you can utilise the self-service registration process to setup an OB10 Portal account. After registering for, and logging into your OB10 account, you will use a secure, yet easy, process to authenticate your relationship with your customer and to activate the Invoice Status Service. 5. Summary The Invoice Status Service benefits you by providing full visibility to the processing and payment status for every invoice you submit to your customers who utilise the Invoice Status Service. And because it is available on the OB10 Portal, the service is available 24/7 enabling you to check the progress of your invoices when it is convenient for you.