What’s new in Vendor Invoice Management 23.4 SP2
Martijn Wever - Managing partner / SAP Invoice Management consultant
As we eagerly await the upcoming release of Vendor Invoice Management, it's worth taking a moment to highlight what VIM 23.4 SP2 already brings to the table. In this blog, we'll explore some of the most impactful features currently available. For comprehensive information on these and other capabilities, please refer to the detailed release notes.
Foundation
The VIM Foundation serves as a vital component across all products, including VIM Invoice, VIM Beyond Invoice, and Capture for SAP Solutions. While certain improvements are specific to the VIM Foundation, others are seamlessly integrated into the solutions themselves. This section outlines the various aspects of the VIM Solution, acknowledging that enhancements in one area frequently influence the performance of other products.
The figure below illustrates our complete product suite.
Vendor Invoice Management products have been helping customers digitalize their solutions for many years. These products include pre-configured content that customers can implement immediately, allowing them to benefit from OpenText's expertise and accelerate their implementation process.
Over time, the Vendor Invoice Management product functionality has expanded, resulting in more comprehensive Baseline Content. Among the supported document types, Invoices and Sales Orders offer the most extensive Baseline Content. This includes configuration options for extraction (Capture), inbound processing (VIM Foundation), and data handling (VIM Solutions).
Additional incoming documents like Remittance Advice, Quotations, Order Confirmations, and Delivery Notes are also supported. The product frameworks are well-modularized and reusable, enabling customers to activate any document type they need.
Enhancements to Fiori component
OpenText aligns with SAP's strategic Fiori direction to enhance the user experience of its Vendor Invoice Management solution. Fiori is rapidly becoming the most feature-rich interface for VIM and is now reaching feature parity with the SAP GUI.
Currently, more than nine VIM Fiori apps are available for various roles and personas in workflow steps and for informational purposes in both ERP and S/4HANA systems. Additionally, classic VIM power user transactions, such as VIM workplace and the VAN report, are supported via SAPGUI for HTML and Fiori.
In recent releases, OpenText has updated and added several apps to improve the VIM experience. These apps include:
Enter Cost Assignment Advanced: This app enables users to enter advanced cost assignments for invoices without Purchase Order assignment. While there is also an app for simple invoices with strict limitations (see documentation), the 'Advanced' app is more commonly used in practice and now offers additional functionality such as:
Multiple accounts and cost objects
Add, delete, copy and split functionality
Upload/download coding templates
Show and apply AI generated coding proposals (See Smart Coding below)
Accounts Payable Workplace: This app provides a centralized workspace for accounts payable (AP) tasks, enabling users to view and manage invoices and payments. It offers AP a unified view that incorporates various Fiori apps for invoice processing. Through this app, AP can validate invoices, complete indexing, handle exceptions, monitor invoice progress, and generate reports both during and after processing.
SAP Inbox: The SAP Inbox app delivers a unified inbox for managing tasks and notifications in SAP, and VIM now integrates with this app. This integration enables VIM workflows to display alongside other SAP workflow tasks in the general inbox. Each VIM work item provides specific details about its related object, allowing users to view these details and navigate to the corresponding workplace app via a provided link. This enhancement streamlines the workflow process by consolidating VIM notifications within the My Inbox app, making it easier for SAP users to access and manage their tasks.
Smart Coding
Improving coding efficiency presents a significant opportunity for Accounts Payable organizations to leverage their vast information access and drive productivity. Smart Coding employs advanced algorithms to analyze invoices and assign cost objects to line items. When Smart Coding reaches a predetermined confidence threshold (such as 80%), it automatically assigns the cost objects. This process can operate fully automatically in the background or allow users to manually select from proposed options.
E-Invoicing
E-Invoices (electronic data invoices like XML invoices or those with QR codes) offer numerous advantages through automation, tax compliance, and environmental benefits by reducing paper waste. By eliminating manual processes, organizations save time and cut costs associated with document processing. With fewer manual steps, organizations significantly reduce error likelihood, ensuring data integrity throughout the invoicing process.
OpenText has developed baseline content to help organizations accept E-Invoices into their VIM system across different countries. Each country may have its own proprietary format, such as Fattura PA in Italy or XRechnung in Germany. VIM can also handle generic formats for countries using less specific standards. The figure below shows a snapshot of the numerous critical changes occurring in the coming months and years that will affect businesses trading in these countries. The VIM system can be configured to accept and process e-invoices, regardless of how they are received. This includes a generic approach that can handle any type of XML template.
Reporting Enhancements
In recent releases, OpenText has updated and added several reports to enhance the VIM experience. These reports include:
Fiori Analytics: The Fiori Analytics tool provides new features for analyzing the invoice life cycle. One of the key updates is the inclusion of data sources for invoice process steps and exceptions. This allows users to track and monitor the progress of invoices throughout the entire life cycle.
Invoice Cockpit: The Accounts Payable team can elevate their user experience with the new SAP FIORI Accounts Payable Cockpit. This tool provides insights and enables action for the AP team. Users can configure their own SAP Fiori page, combining VIM analytical cards such as 'urgent invoices by due date' and 'top exceptions’.
SAP SIGNAVIO integration: SAP Signavio is a powerful tool that allows businesses to gain valuable insights into their process execution. By analyzing process execution, Signavio process intelligence provides visibility into previously unknown process inefficiencies and bottlenecks. One of OpenText's latest additions to VIM is the SAP Signavio Value Accelerator for VIM (Vendor Invoice Management) Invoice Scenario. Designed on the SAP Signavio Platform, there are data connectors, transformation tools, and pre-built dashboards for VIM Accounts Payable processes. This means that VIM customers can quickly implement process mining capabilities and start gaining insights into their invoice processes.
IES Extraction Analytics : Report to identify recognition performance combining OCR data and invoice data with overview to calculate percentages and the details for a specific document.
Dashboard view to display extraction rates per Capture Profile: Summarization per Capture profile with standard comparison with second period identify trends. Especially the summarisation in the Detail pane on recognition rates per Document Layout and Vendor are very useful.
Other functional enhancements
Besides the big enhancement areas mentioned above, there are scores of little gems in the new releases of VIM that will help you optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of your VIM processes:
Capture related
Universal inbound handler and Flexible channel selection to receive multiple invoice formats via the same input channel.
Support for Arabic and Hebrew language.
Improved Chinese and Vietnamese invoice recognition.
OCR support for the Danish FIK code.
Supplier dependent validation frequency: indicate for a specific vendor if or how often an invoice should be validated.
(Automatic) classification of additional cost like freight, customs and surcharges.
Enhance Validation client performance: documents can be validated faster and even more secure.
Possibility to tweak the recognition of tax rates for incoming invoices.
Incoming Invoice related
Multiple users in the invoice approval workflow: In the latest release of VIM, a new Approval Flow Settings was introduced to enhance the invoice approval workflow. This new feature allows for the approval process to involve multiple users, specifically in the line-based sequential approval (line items within an invoice are approved and sent out sequentially until the entire pack is approved).
Enhanced integration with SAP Transport Management: This includes business rules, new data fields, a new DP document type, new fields in the DP indexing screen, and the configuration for using Capture to extract TM specific fields like
Freight Order
Freight Settlement
Bill of Lading
Air Waybill
Enhanced Line-Item Matching: Utilizes HANA DB’s fuzzy text search for more accurate matching of PO line-items, reducing manual corrections and improving processing speed.
Advanced Automation for Withholding Tax: further automation capabilities to handle complex withholding tax scenarios, minimizing manual intervention and ensuring tax compliance.
Incoming Sales Orders related:
Support eOrder: Electronic (PEPPOL) receival of 1ncoming orders
Process Sales Order for one-time Customer
Support multiple Sales Order changes: making changes to already posted sales orders based on new incoming documents
Factory Calendar Integration into Sales Order Solution
Enhanced enrichment rules for Sales Order
Sales Order - Check credit limit for customer comparing order currency with the credit control area currency
Conclusion
The recent updates to the Vendor Invoice Management Solutions and Capture for SAP Solutions product suites have introduced numerous new features and enhancements. These updates focus on improving user experience, increasing recognition rates for digitalization efforts, enhancing reporting and analytics capabilities, and boosting overall performance and monitoring.
Learn more
For further questions or information on this topic, or for other questions regarding SAP Workflow, Fiori or SAP Invoice Management (SIM), please contact Martijn Wever.
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