Introduction: 

These days for checking the Invoice and Payment status, most businesses are busy doing manual progression. Daily, multiple requests are received by the supplier to check the invoice statuses and provide other details. Checking the status and providing the details of each invoice over the emails requires labor, which is a tedious and time-consuming process. 

Integrating this problem with SAP Intelligent RPA will lead to automate the payment status in SAP S/4HANA and Invoice process. It substantially provides a file contains detailed information on Invoice status and reduces the time required for computation, and therefore helps suppliers' reply to invoice checks.  

The main advantages that can be achieved using this bot are as below, 

• Automate reply to standard requests by providing the answer for one or many invoices in a user-configurable spreadsheet template. 

• Reduce labor required to reply to all suppliers. 

• The bot will help the end-users get detailed information about the supplier invoices   

• Reduces Manual efforts 

• The querying process for supplier invoices is faster and error-free compared to the manual process.           

The following sections of this blog post will detail the Supplier Invoice Status Check configurations, its execution, and one business scenario where this has been successfully used. 

Overview: 

This section summarizes all the fundamentals for conducting the test in terms of systems, users, and business conditions. Few steps we need to configure before executing the bot are as follows and this is will be a one-time activity. 

• Make sure that you have deployed the package in an environment and added the attended trigger in the Cloud Factory.  

• In the next step, create variables in the variables section of cloud factory providing user credentials and the URL of SAP S/4 HANA system, email id from which you want to fetch the template and finally the folder path to extract the downloaded excel template. 

• Also, prepare the templates of supplier invoice. The bot can check the invoice and payment status according to the filters in the templates (Invoicing Party ID, Company Code, Invoice Date From, Invoice Date To, Status, Reference) only by using the excel templates with the specific format. The supplier invoice templates filled with supplier invoice details are the supplier invoice lists. 

 

Note: 

• Please use the excel templates included in the package you get from SAP Intelligent RPA Store to execute this bot. Make sure that the format follows the requirements of the templates. 

• The input templates with the file type “xls” and “xlsx” will be processed as the Excel templates.  

• The bot will not search for the existing invoices without any filter value. At least one filter value should be entered as the search criteria. 

Bot Workflow: 

From an end users’ perspective, the automation of Supplier Invoice Status Check is a seamless experience. The end-user must schedule the Bot to run from the cloud factory and the framework takes care of the rest of the routing that is to upload and get the respective filtered data in an excel file which will also be sent back to the Suppliers email-id. 

Working Example: Supplier Invoice Processing Scenario 

Firstly, the end-user performs just one step of Scheduling the BOT on the cloud factory. 

 

 

Secondly, in two different ways we can fetch supplier invoice status either by retrieving the filtered template through Outlook Office or by uploading the template file through the local folder. So, I will be demonstrating the execution of this bot stepwise. 

Step wise instruction: 

Step 1. Launch the Agent 

Launch SAP Intelligent RPA Desktop Agent to start Supplier invoice Status Checks. 

Step 2. Access the Bot 

Select Supplier invoice Status Checks. 

Step 3. Get Supplier Invoice Lists From 

Here, you will choose to get supplier invoice lists from the email attachments or a folder. If you select the Email Attachments radio button, the bot will get supplier invoice lists from the email attachments. Here, you need to specify at least one of the following: 

• Inbox Subfolder 

• Email Search Term 

In addition, you need to mention the Start Date and End Date for the "unread" emails in the inbox subfolder. Different email accounts can be entered, which are separated by a semicolon. The bot execution report and check results will be sent to the email accounts you have entered after the execution. 

If you choose to get supplier invoice lists from the local or shared folder, you need to specify the name of local or shared folder.  

Step 4. Execute the Bot 

In this step, the Bot will automatically open the Supplier Invoice List app, Supplier Invoice web page, Display Process Flow – Accounts Payable, and Manage Payment Blocks based on the specific invoice status. 

 

 

Step 5. Check the Results and Bot Execution Report 

Check the email after the completion of the workflow or check the folder you browse to. The resulting files and bot execution report will be saved in the folder or sent via email. 

 

Video of the showcase: 

Canarys | SAP intelligent RPA Bot to automate Supplier Invoice Status Checks (4GJ) – YouTube

Conclusion: 

In this way, with a single framework fetching the status of supplier invoices can be automated based on multiple criteria that will be used for process automation of different business objects in ERP. 

With this blog post, the intention is to get customers, business managers, and RPA developers into thinking about using SAP Intelligent RPA 2.0 for various automation opportunities by showcasing the simple steps required to achieve great results. Also, to start the conversation about utilizing the various options available within SAP Intelligent RPA 2.0 to make these scenarios a reality. I hope you found this blog helpful.