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The new AP Automation functionality in Acumatica 2020 R2 looks pretty slick:
From a workflow standpoint, for paper AP Bills, I would probably setup my copier/scanner to scan to a folder so the PDF files all accumulate in the folder. Then I'd drag those PDF files into Acumatica individually and delete them from the folder after dragging each one. I also wonder if the new FILES -> UPLOAD USING MOBILE APP button works on the new Incoming Documents (AP301100) screen for those working from home without a copier/scanner.
Bonus points if Acumatica could find a way in the future to have a copier/scanner send a PDF files directly to the Incoming Documents (AP301100) screen without need an intermediate step.
ScanSnap (click here) is a popular personal scanning device that would be a good choice for anyone working from home. ScanSnap has a way to add applications that can ingest PDF files to the menu so you scan directly to the application (click here for an example of Evernote scanning directly to ScanSnap). It would be cool to do the same thing with Acumatica, maybe somehow using DeviceHub which can be installed using the main Acumatica installation routine:
Tim, did you get this working in 2020 R2? I installed and tried to activate but no lucky there is a glitch from what i hear, created a dev ticket to follow up... hopefully if I get this working then planning to test using my Epson scanner which has capability to upload scanned documents to cloud (Google drive), also there is a scan log feature in Acumatica which allows to scan documents via Device Hub which possibly can be input for AP bill automation hoping to test few scenarios ..
Are you getting this error?
"To enable this feature, activate the license that includes this feature on the Activate License (SM201510) form." ?
I too would like to tries this locally before upgrading, but never had to activate the license before in order to try a feature.
@ellie Yes that's the error one gets if the license is not activated, you need to have an active customer license or developer license applied and activated to make it work and it won't work on local or 2 user instances.
In my case I did apply my license key but still the feature isn't getting enabled, so will wait for another week and it might who knows 🙂
@infosourcing We had to put in a ticket with Acumatica to get a license key for our demo environment for 2020 R2 to get the AP document recognition (and the Expense Receipt recogntion) to work.
Hi Tim,
I have yet to find out which OCR service Acumatica is using, are they using ABBYY flexicapture, XTRACTA or AWS textract or something else?
Also is there additional cost for this feature? as most APA solutions charge per document rather than a fixed monthly price I would expect that there would be.
Limitations as I see it
- No external verification of image and metadata extract. Must be done by the AP user, per invoice. So more time spent seeing what the system got right
- Invoices can only be dragged or selected one by one. If you received 50 invoices in a day, this would be very cumbersome. Didn’t see a batch process, although there might be one.
- No feature to match to PO data or Goods Receipts (perhaps something they might build into it). So no real timesaving for a PO issuing client.
- It says the system ‘learns’ about the invoice, but it appears this is from the operator making new decisions on where data is located.
- The ad hoc processing of a new Supplier invoice seemed a very odd way to approve a virtually unknown invoice. It lets the system capture the supplier details and then the AP operator accepts this as a given, and approves the invoice. My view would be that the set up of a new supplier should be an arms length process from the financial processing of the invoice. The process shown lends itself to fraud attempts.
You could link up your "AccountsPayable@Company.com" email address to process incoming mail via Acumatica and there is an new option under the incoming mail settings to have it send attachments to the Document Recognition service, so this could save some of that clicking and dragging.
I am hoping that they will add some PO matching items in the next iteration, as this seems to be a gap in the functionality right now
Carl,
I believe they're using Azure Cognitive Services: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/services/cognitive-services/form-recognizer/
It was mentioned during the keynote at the last summit.
Gabriel
So I just got this installed and it comes up. I am looking for documentation on setting things up and can't find anything. Anyone know where I can get some documentation/training on this?
@mikerosz check the 2020 R2 documentation link it has instructions on how to setup, process documents.
I was able to upload the pdf and have it recognize and train it to update and create bills, haven't tested the system email accounts and Outlook plugin yet but they both shld work similar way https://help-2020r2.acumatica.com/(W(1))/Help?ScreenId=ShowWiki&pageid=e2aea8fd-a773-4ead-94e0-78d7d7548a26
Good luck ..
Thanks, I found the documentation and have it working now. One question I still have is if there is a way to build a preset or train the recognition process for invoices from specific vendors. I have run different invoices in from the same vendor and experienced the same mismatches. I would like to tell the recognition document that here is what this vendor's invoice looks like and define where to look for items. I don't see any documentation on that. Any clues?
@mikerosz If you drag your mouse over areas on the invoice that were not captured and manually input the data, supposedly it "learns" to capture it for next time. Whether it learns just for that vendor or not, I'm not sure. It's just magic I guess, somehow. But I doubt that it's that smart yet since it's still pretty early.
@timrodman I have done that with several invoices from the same vendor and it continues to NOT recognize new invoices from that vendor. I will admit that this vendor's invoices are somewhat unique, but the system doesn't seem to be learning about these invoices.
I was hoping there was a function where I could specifically map out the invoice for a vendor....
Thanks for your input.
@mikerosz "Artificial Intelligence" is all the rage these days. I personally wonder how intelligent it really is.
@kingcarlos, I think @gabriel is right. It's Azure Forms. Here's where they mentioned it at Summit 2020:
https://twitter.com/TimRodman/status/1222231156365479936
From what I've heard, for expense receipts at least, you get 1,000 per month as part of your Acumatica license. Although I doubt they have a way yet to stop you if you go over.
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