Learn how PurchasePlus helps your Organisation to automatically receive, scan and process Invoices and Credit Notes using our proprietary AI.
Jump to:
- Introduction
- Receiving Invoices and Credit Notes into PurchasePlus
- How the AI Scans PDFs
- How the AI Processes Invoices and Credit Notes
- Current Limitations and Troubleshooting
- Accessing Scanned Invoice and Credit Note PDFs
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Note for Legacy PurchasePlus Users
What is Paperless Invoicing?
Paperless Invoicing is a module of PurchasePlus that uses our purpose-built, proprietary AI service to Receive, Scan, and Process both Invoices and Credit Notes from your Suppliers, according to the processing rules (e.g. Flags and Thresholds) that had been configured for your Organisation.
It effectively plays the role of an Accounts Payable Coordinator that works 24/7 at a rapid rate, allowing your team to focus on high-value and proactive work.
Receiving Invoices and Credit Notes into PurchasePlus
Via Email
Each customer gets a dedicated AI Scanning Email Address, e.g. ‘yourhotel.au.inv@marketboomer.com’, which you can share with your Suppliers as your preferred Accounts Payable email inbox. You can also send Invoices or Credit Notes you receive to this inbox too, in the event that a Supplier has sent it directly to you.
The AI Scanner monitors your Organisation’s dedicated inbox, and intelligently recognises Invoice and Credit Note PDF’s - automatically sending them to our AI service for processing and extraction.
Invoices and Credit Notes will be visible in [Invoices] → [AI Scanning Inbox] (if enabled for your Organisation) as soon as extraction work has begun, with a status of Scanning:
Once scanning is complete, the Scan Task’s Status will be updated to Scanned, and it will be able to be reviewed and edited.
Via the UI
The AI can also be triggered by Creating a New Invoice (or Credit Note) in the User Interface, and selecting [Drag and Drop PDF Invoice] from either the Create New Invoice, Create New Credit Note, or Create New Scanning Task actions.
You can upload up to 10 Invoices or Credit Notes at a time - the AI will scan each Invoice or Credit Note individually.
Invoices and Credit Notes uploaded via the UI will be visible in [Invoices] → [AI Scanning Inbox] as soon as extraction work has begun, with a status of Scanning.
How the AI Scans PDFs
Splitting Files into Single Invoices
Files will be checked for multiple Invoices or Credit Notes, and if multiples are detected, the file will be split into separate Scanning Tasks.
Splitting follows this logic: Starting with the first page, a split will occur at the start of a new Invoice or Credit note. If you want supporting attachments with your invoice, make sure they follow the invoice they should be attached to, e.g:
- Invoice
- Supporting File
- Invoice
- Supporting File
And NOT:
- Invoice
- Invoice
- Supporting File
- Supporting File
Extracting Data
Once the AI is confident that it’s working with single Invoices, the data on each document will be extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, cleaned to remove errors (and format it correctly for our system) and then validated multiple times to ensure that only correct values pass through without human intervention.
Header-Level and Line-Level information is extracted from the document and the relevant fields are pre-filled in the PurchasePlus Invoice or Credit Note Creator, where you can review the extracted data side-by-side with the scanned PDF:
What can the AI Extract and Pre-Fill?
Matching Suppliers
The AI can identify Suppliers, so long as your Organisation has ‘Enabled’ that Supplier in My Suppliers. The AI will not identify a Supplier with whom your Organisation has no relationship with, even if that Supplier exists in our database.
If you are uploading an Invoice or PDF via the UI, you have the option of selecting the Supplier from a drop-down list:
Otherwise, the Supplier can be automatically identified by their Business Number (e.g. ABN in Australia) assuming it is set against that Supplier in My Suppliers:
However, if the Supplier’s business number (e.g. ABN in Australia) is not on the Invoice or Credit Note, the AI will not automatically identify the Supplier.
If the Supplier is automatically matched, the AI can then automatically match products and Purchase Orders (that are in the Open state) also. If multiple Suppliers are found with matching Purchase Orders, no Supplier is selected. If no matching Supplier is found, the scanning job continues without Supplier information.
Finally, Suppliers can be identified by adding the Supplier ID (note: NOT the Business Number) to a secondary paperless email address, e.g. ‘yourhotel.au.inv+1234@marketboomer.com’, where 1234 is the Supplier ID. This can be helpful for Suppliers that do not include their ABN in their invoices; your Organisation can simply provide these suppliers with a 'unique' email address to send their invoices to.
Matching Department and Account Codes
Department and Account Codes can be pre-filled based on the settings on the Trade Relationship between the Purchaser and Supplier. You can view and update these settings in [Suppliers] → [My Suppliers] → [Supplier Name]:
If no Department or Account Code setting exists on your My Supplier record, but a Purchase Order has been matched to the Invoice being scanned, the AI will pre-fill the Department and Account Code on the Purchase Order Instead:
If no Department or Account Code settings exist on the Purchase Order either, the AI will then look for the settings on the Supplier record itself.
Other Header-Level Data
Other Header-Level Information is able to be extracted from the PDF and pre-filled, such as:
- Date,
- Currency,
- Totals,
- Taxation Values,
- Delivery Fees (inc. Tax %).
Matching Products
The AI extracts each line of the Invoice or Credit Note, and tries first to find existing Products in our database that match the Line.
- First, the AI attempts to match with Products that are owned by the Supplier, using the available Product Code(s) to find matches. If there is any Product found that is Owned by that Supplier, then it will pre-fill the data from the Supplier’s product (e.g. P+ code, Brand, Unit Size, etc).
- Second, it will attempt to find just the exact match of a Supplier owned product (not considering the available Product Codes). In the event of multiple matches, the system will choose the best match.
- Third, it will attempt an exact match of a Marketboomer-owned Master Product. In the event of multiple identical Marketboomer-owned Master Product results, the system will prioritize the oldest product in our system, and products that include an image. Matched products will appear in the UI as 'locked' and show the data that is present in our database for that product.
Exact matches are prioritised, and then partial matches. In the case that a match cannot be determined with confidence, the line item will be created in our system as a new product..
You can remove any match by using the Options button on the left-hand side of the line item in the Invoice Creator Form, and clicking [Clear Product].
If multiple potential matches are found, each match is scored by our Best Choice algorithm, and then the Product with the highest score is selected. In case of a tie, the first match in the list is selected.
If no match is available, the AI will create totally new Products, and automatically assign a Category and Subcategory to the new Product(s), based on the available product data and Supplier Name.
Other Line-Level Data
Other Line-Level Information is able to be extracted and pre-filled such as:
- Unit of Measure & Unit Name,
- Sell Pack Size & Sell Pack Quantity,
- Quantity,
- Unit Price,
- Tax %,
- And Line Total, which is actually a calculated value (and not an extracted value).
Prompts
The PurchasePlus Administration Team has the ability to provide ‘Prompts’ for the AI, to help it make good decisions. These ‘Prompts’ are optional, and do not have to be adopted by the Purchasing Organisations using the AI Scanning Service.
For example, ‘Interpret ‘Customer Reference’ on a PDF as ‘Purchase Order Number’. In this way, we can account for real-world ambiguity and continually improve the way the AI works.
If you have a suggestion for an AI Prompt, please get in touch with your Account Manager.
Average Scanning Time per Document
Scan Time for the average Invoice is about 30 seconds (as of November 2024).
Supported Languages
All languages are currently able to be scanned by the AI. However, we don’t translate Product descriptions (e.g., if the Invoice has product descriptions in French, our AI will scan and pre-fill the product descriptions in French).
How the AI Processes Invoices and Credit Notes
Once the extracted data has been pre-filled in the Invoice or Credit Note creator, the document can be ‘created’ in PurchasePlus - either manually, or leveraging the ‘Enable Auto-Create’ setting in the Organisation Settings.
Setting: Enable Auto-Create
When this Setting is Enabled, Invoices and Credit Notes created via the AI Scanner will automatically be created in the Flagged or Reconciled state (according to your Organisation's Flag Settings and Thresholds), assuming the following conditions (i.e. validation checks) are met:
- Header Requirements:
- Purchaser ID is present,
- Supplier ID is present,
- Invoice number is provided,
- Invoice date is provided,
- Total value excluding tax is present and not zero,
- Total value is within a valid range (-100 trillion to 100 trillion),
- Line Item Requirements:
- At least one line item is present,
- At least one line item has a Quantity, and a total value greater than $0,
- Each line item has either a valid product match ID or an item description,
- Calculated line total for each item is within a valid range,
- Total Calculations:
- The sum of all line item totals (including tax) matches the Invoice total,
- The difference between calculated and provided totals is less than 0.1.
If this setting is turned off (or the above validation checks fail), the AI Scanning Tasks will remain in the state of Scanned and will require Manual user review prior to being created as an Invoice or Credit Note (see below).
User at your Organisation can perform this task, or a member of our dedicated team will review and process the document within a maximum of 3 hours.
Manual Creation
If the above setting is disabled, or if the validation checks fail, the extracted data can be reviewed as a Scan Task by a human, before being Created as an Invoice or Credit Note:
Current Limitations & Troubleshooting
- Only PDF files can be scanned by the Paperless Invoicing AI. The files can be digital PDF’s, or scanned PDF’s.
- There is a 10 page maximum for each scan.
- For best results, ensure that scanned documents are upright in the supplied file.
- Invoices with WET tax are not-yet supported fully, and may have inconsistent results.
- Invoices with values in multiple currencies may experience inconsistent results.
- Extracted hand-written text is not as accurate as typed text.
- Hand-written text on top of a scanned or digital PDF will be included in the Scan, and can lead to unwanted text in the extraction.
Accessing Scanned Invoices and Credit Notes
Scanned PDFs are able to be viewed and downloaded (individually) in the [AI Scanning Inbox], along with the associated documents and data:
Frequently asked questions
- What document types does the Paperless Invoicing AI Scanner support?
We support PDF’s - both digital and scanned. The quality of scanned PDFs will impact the accuracy of the extracted data. - What is the file size limit?
It is recommended that the file size be no larger than 10MB. While the AI will attempt to scan and process files larger than this, it will take much longer, and the Scan Task will automatically fail if it can’t be processed within 15 minutes. - Is there any limit to the number of pages that can be scanned in a single file?
There is a maximum of 10 pages per file upload. - How long does it take to scan a document?
As of November 2024, the average time it takes to scan an Invoice or Credit Note in PurchasePlus is 30 seconds. - How many documents can I upload at once?
You can upload 10 Invoices or Credit Notes at a time (using the AI Scanning Inbox, not the Create Invoice or Credit Note actions). When uploading multiple files via the UI, you can only supply multiple files of the same type (i.e. either all Invoices, or all Credit Notes) in the same upload. If the files are received as an email, they can be a mix of Invoices and Credit Notes. - Does this tool learn from my corrections?
At this stage we have just started saving all the corrections, and the tool will learn from corrections in the near future. - What happens if an Invoice or PDF does not pass the AI’s validation rules?
If a document does not pass the validation rules, it is sent to the "AI Scanning Inbox" for human review. You have the option to perform this review yourself immediately or rely on our dedicated operations team to handle it for you. Our team operates 24/7, ensuring quick turnaround times, with most documents reviewed and processed in under three hours.
Note for Organisations migrating from Legacy PurchasePlus
The Paperless Invoicing AI is the successor to P+i, and is exclusive to New PurchasePlus.
Information about the Legacy P+i module can be found here.