Accounts Payable Operations

Standardize payment request -> invoice capture -> approval -> payment -> journal entry across procurement and accounting. Use Bill and Purchase Order as the starting points, combine AI capture and auto-approvals, and prevent missed or duplicate payments.

Use cases

• Payment management: Centralize payment requests and make due dates and cash outflows visible.
• AI invoice capture (https://invox.jp/ - demo): Convert supplier invoices into structured data and auto-extract line items, tax, and due dates.
• Payable Ops: Match Bill and Purchase Order so only received invoices are paid.

Sanka setup tips

• Manage suppliers with Company, purchasing with Purchase Order, invoices with Bill, and payments with Payment (specify payment type).
• Define a property set to map AI capture results into Bill (invoice number, due date, bank info, consumption tax, etc.).
• Configure approval rules by amount range in Workflow, and add exception paths for urgent payments.

Operating steps

1. Receive payment requests: Register a payment request linked to a Purchase Order. Require approval when there is no PO.
2. AI invoice capture: Capture invoice PDFs from an inbox folder or email forwarding and create Bill drafts.
3. Receipt and matching: Match Purchase Order and Bill by quantity and amount. Escalate approval if there are variances.
4. Approval flow: Auto-route approvals by amount, department, and project. Log approval results in the Bill.
5. Execute payment and journal entry: Record payment date and method, track in Payment, and post journal entries via accounting integration or CSV export.

Automation ideas

• Workflow actions: Send reminder notifications for unapproved Bill records three days before the due date.
• Object actions: If required fields are missing after AI capture, keep the record as draft and prevent it from entering approval.
• Record actions: If matching variances exceed a threshold, automatically create a variance report for the owner.

Reports and monitoring

• Visualize expected cash outflows weekly and monthly in the payment schedule.
• Track late payments and duplicate payments by supplier in dashboards.
• Monitor gaps between PO amounts and invoice amounts to improve procurement accuracy.