Use Case: Create Invoices

Creating an invoice for employee purchases can be a tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone experience. Learn how to automate this workflow using Oracle Integration.

Overview

Prerequisite: Your organization receives invoices from vendors.

Step 1. Find new invoices Step 2. Extract invoice data Step 3. Review the extracted data Step 4. Confirm the PO amount Step 5. Approve the purchase Step 6. Create an invoice
Integration

Start according to a schedule or when a vendor sends an invoice

Use File Server as the SFTP repository

Integration

Use a built-in action to extract data from the invoice using OCI Document Understanding

 Integration

Review the confidence score of the extracted data

Human in the loop

If the confidence score is low, verify that the data is accurate

 Robot

Check whether the authorized and billed values match

 Decision

Determine whether the PO amount is above or below the limit for automatic approvals

Human in the loop

Approve orders that are above the limit

 Integration

Create an invoice in the enterprise resource planning software using an application-specific adapter

 

Prerequisite. Receive invoices

  • Your organization's vendors send invoices to your organization. For example:

    • Email

      Vendors send invoices as PDF attachments to a specific email address. All emails have a predetermined subject line.

    • SFTP server

      Vendors upload invoices to File Server, which is the built-in SFTP server.

 

Step 1. Find new invoices

  • An integration detects when a vendor sends an invoice. For example:

    • Daily, an integration checks the email inbox for new messages with the predetermined subject line.

    • Every time an invoice is uploaded to File Server, a system event is automatically created. An integration listens for the creation of the system event and then runs.

 

Step 2. Extract invoice data

  1. The integration extracts data from the invoice using AI.

  2. The integration calls the OCI Document Understanding service, which gets the purchase order number (PO number) and purchase order amount (PO amount) from each invoice.

 

Step 3. Review the extracted data

  1. The integration reviews the confidence score produced by OCI Document Understanding.

  2. If the score is less than 1, the integration creates a task using human in the loop.

  3. An employee compares the data extract from OCI Document Understanding with the invoice.

    • If the data is correct, the employee approves the data extract.

    • If the data isn't correct, the employee updates the information in the provided form.

 

Step 4. Confirm that the PO amount is accurate

  1. The integration passes the PO number and PO amount to a robot, which checks whether the amount that was authorized matches the amount that you were billed for.

  2. The robot opens your organization's legacy procurement system and uses the PO number to find the original invoice for the order.

  3. The robot compares the PO amount from the integration with the PO amount in the procurement system and tells the integration whether the values match.

    Note: Using a robot is required for this use case because the legacy procurement system doesn't have APIs. However, if you're working with an application that has APIs to obtain this information, you can use an integration for this step instead.

 

Step 5. Approve the purchase

  • If the values match, the integration sends the PO amount to a decision, which determines whether the PO amount is above or below the limit for automatic approvals.

    • If the invoice is below the limit, the decision automatically approves the creation of an invoice.

    • If the invoice is above the limit, the integration creates a task using human in the loop.

      The employee reviews the task, which includes key details for the purchase.

      • If the purchase meets the company's rules, the employee approves the invoice.

      • If the purchase doesn't meet the company's rules, the employee can reject some or all of the purchases by typing a response using natural language. For example: "We can get new desk chairs for the office, but the espresso machine is too much of a splurge."

 

Step 6. Create an invoice

  1. After the decision or an employee approves the purchase, the integration creates an invoice in the enterprise resource planning software, such as Oracle Cloud ERP.

  2. The integration uses the application-specific adapter, such as the Oracle ERP Cloud Adapter, to connect to the application and create the invoice.