FAQs: AP Automation with Purchasing

Submit vendor documents by uploading them from the Automated transactions list or by emailing them to a Sage-provisioned mailbox. Submitted documents are saved as drafts on the Automated transactions list.

See the following topics for more information:

• Upload documents to create automated transactions

• Email a document to create an automated transaction

Yes. You can take steps to improve document matching and transaction prediction accuracy over time. For recommendations, see Best practices to train AI for smarter automation.

AI creates different transaction types depending on your automation configurations. Some transaction types are credited differently based on the complexity of the prediction requirements.

Your company pays for a number of credits to use each month.

For Purchasing transactions, credits are consumed based on the type of transaction predicted by AI. When you manually change or remove the transaction match, this change is not reflected in your subscription usage. View edits to automated transactions in the audit trail.

See the following topics for more information:

• Compare header-level and line-level transaction matching

• Set up AP Automation with Purchasing

A PO number on the vendor invoice is ideal, but it is not required. AI/ML uses other factors to predict a transaction match, such as item, quantity, price, and previous vendor history.

This means that over time, AI/ML can predict and match a transaction even when there's no PO number on the vendor invoice.

Intacct matches a vendor invoice to a single source document, for example a purchase order.

To link multiple source documents to one vendor invoice, follow these steps: 

1. Select the Enable the conversions for multiple source documents option in your Purchasing configurations and save.

2. When editing automated transaction drafts, select a different open-source document on any line item in the Show details window.

See How Sage Intacct populates draft vendor invoices.

Yes, new draft vendor invoices are created from uploaded or emailed documents. These transactions are then matched to existing source purchasing transactions. Source purchasing transactions are not created from vendor invoices.

The result depends on whether the document matches a Purchasing transaction and whether AP bill workflows are enabled for the vendor.

See the following topics for more information:

• Upload documents to create automated transactions

• Email a document to create an automated transaction

• Move an automated transaction to Accounts Payable

When AP Automation with Purchasing is enabled, Smart Rules and Smart Events do not run on draft transactions until you submit or post.

This is true for any draft that you create in the Purchasing, Order Entry, or Inventory applications, even when the draft uses a transaction definition that is not mapped for automated transaction matching.

AP Automation with Purchasing is optimized for USD currency. While other currencies are usually recorded correctly, we cannot guarantee that AI/ML will recognize the currency.

Vendor invoices without currency symbols are recorded using the base currency of the entity or level where the vendor invoice was uploaded or emailed.

Attachments are stored with your other Intacct attachments, in the following folders:

• ATUPLOADGROUP_apbill: Documents that you uploaded from the Bills list.

• ATUPLOADGROUP_EMAIL: Documents that you forwarded by email.

• ATUPLOADGROUP_podocument: Documents that you upload from the Automated transactions list.

To view a list of all attachments, go to Company > Setup > Storage > Attachments.

When a vendor invoices includes additional files, upload or email only the vendor invoice. This is important because Sage Intacct creates a draft transaction for each file you upload or email, whether it is a vendor invoice or supporting material.

After Intacct creates the draft transaction, you can add supporting files to the vendor invoice as attachments.

Tax details are not captured from the vendor document.

If you defined tax information in the originating transaction definition, these calculations are applied in the draft transaction.

Learn How Sage Intacct populates draft vendor invoices

Create a custom view and include the Anomaly column.

You can upload up to 30 documents at once. To upload more, select Upload again and then drag and drop more files.

If you have multiple purchasing documents, upload the documents in separate files. You can upload multiple files as a batch. This is necessary because for each file you upload, Intacct creates a single draft transaction.

You can view the list of your provisioned email addresses in Configure Accounts Payable. You need admin privileges to view this page.

AP Automation email addresses use the following format.

When determining your email address, do not include spaces or underscores, even if they are present in your company ID.

Yes, you can forward a batch of documents attached to one email. Intacct creates a draft transaction for each attachment.

The following limitations exist when you forward a single email containing multiple documents as attachments:

• Each document must be a separate file.

• File names for each document must be unique with the batch of documents.

• The email can have a maximum of 200 attachments.

• The size of email message and all attachments combined must be less than 40 MB.

Email addresses are not editable.

Many customers prefer to start by forwarding documents to the email address themselves. Then, as they become more comfortable with the process and confident in the results, they might ask vendors to send documents directly.

Some things to consider before asking a vendor to send vendor invoices to provisioned mailboxes:

• Does the vendor often include extra attachments that would generate duplicate or superfluous drafts? 

  Examples of this include supporting documentation or promotional material. For these vendors, you might want to forward their documents for them, after removing extra attachments.

• Is the vendor likely to send email that requires your response, other than vendor invoices?

  Communicate with the vendor to let them know that this is an unmonitored mailbox for vendor invoices only.

• Will the vendor send automated marketing emails to the provisioned mailbox?

  Such emails can result in import exceptions and invalid draft vendor invoices. Forwarding vendor invoices yourself might be a preferable option.

When the system encounters an error with an emailed document, it sends an error message to the sender. For example, if no attachment was found or the attachment was not one of the accepted file types, the reply includes this information.

If the vendor emails the document from an unmonitored email address, such as a no-reply email, the vendor will not know that they need to resubmit the document. For this reason, you might want to forward documents from those vendors who send from unmonitored email addresses, instead of asking them to email vendor invoices directly. That way, you’ll receive any error messages and can follow up with the vendor as needed.