Purchase invoice scanning enables electronic approval circulation of invoices and electronic archiving in cases where e-invoices are not yet available.
Overview
Procountor’s purchase invoice scanning service provides a convenient way to convert incoming paper invoices into electronic format and achieve more efficient invoice processing. The mailed invoices are scanned and transferred automatically to Procountor financial management software. The service is implemented in co-operation with OpusCapita (formerly Itella Information).
Paper or email invoices are directed to an invoicing address provided by OpusCapita, where they are preprocessed and digitised. The invoice images and data captured from the invoices are available for the customer in electronic format on the next weekday after the arrival date.
Pricing
The service charges consist of an opening charge and use charges. The use charges are based on the number of scanned purchase invoices and the number of included pages. All charges are debited from Procountor’s monthly invoice.
Implementation
When the customer has decided to implement the service, it notifies Procountor. This forwards the appropriate order information to OpusCapita. The customer can select mail scanning or mail and email scanning. The scanning service is ready for production start about two weeks after the order. You can order the scanning service at Procountor sales myynti@finago.com or through your own contact person. By ordering the scanning service you also accept the pricing in accordance with this service description.
Procountor notifies the customer of the PO box address attached to the scanning service (as an additional service also the email address) used as the customer’s billing address. After this, the customer can notify its invoice senders of the change and start receiving its paper invoices through the scanning service.
Receiving invoices
Paper invoices are directed from OpusCapita’s distribution network to the Procountor’s customer at the address PL XXXXX, large customer post code 00021 Laskutus (or 00063 Laskunet). The PO box numbers are used to differentiate between the different companies and units. Procountor notifies the customer of the company-specific PO box number after processing the scanning service order.
Emailed invoices are directed from Opus Capita to Procountor’s customer by an email address containing the company name, country code, and service and identification code; example of the email address customer.FI.P.101231-1@docinbound.com. Procountor notifies the customer of the company-specific email address after processing the scanning service order.
Invoice processing, paper invoices
OpusCapita receives the mailed purchase invoices. The envelopes are opened by a machine and the content is picked out manually. The envelopes are deleted. The content is sorted. The invoices are straightened and possible staples and paper clips are removed before scanning. Documents other than invoices and invoices that cannot be read optically are forwarded to the address agreed with the customer. By default, all attachments to the invoices are scanned. Advertising material, customer magazines, price lists, catalogues and invoice copies are deleted without scanning. Payment reminders are processed in the same way as normal invoices.
Invoice processing, email invoices
OpusCapita receives the emailed purchase invoices that are in PDF format and have the invoicing address notified by OpusCapita (e.g. customer.FI.P.101231-1@docinbound.com) in the address field of the mail. No other address entries are allowed in the address field; if you want to email a copy of the invoice to the customer you must enter this email address in the cc field, for example. An email can have 10 attachments at the maximum, and the maximum size of an attachment is 10 MB. Each attachment is regarded a separate invoice. Attachments in a format other than PDF are not processed. The invoices or receipts sent to the email scanning service should be scanned with an actual scanner. They can’t be for example photos taken with a mobile phone of an invoice or receipt which are then converted to a PDF file. The scanner can’t unfortunately read these kind of invoices/receipts.
Optical interpretation of invoices
The following information is read from the invoices:
- The PO box or email address (identifies the receiving company, the information is used for addressing the invoice to the right company)
- Invoice number
- Invoice date
- Due date
- Currency
- Sum
- Reference no.
- IBAN
- BIC
- Sender’s name
- Sender’s Business ID (Finnish)
- Invoice type (debit/credit)
Row information
- Product name
- VAT percentage
- Row sum including VAT
The interpretation of information covers invoices written in Finnish, Swedish and English. For invoices written in other languages, only the invoice image is supplied and the missing information is forwarded as empty fields. The missing sum is filled with the value of zero.
The mandatory information on the invoice is the receiver’s invoicing address (customer name, PO box and post office). Without this information the invoice cannot be delivered to the customer’s Procountor environment. If the invoicing address is missing, it will be copied from the envelope to the invoice, which is charged as a separate item for that invoice. Optically interpreted information is targeted at corresponding fields of the purchase invoice in Procountor. In addition, an image of the invoice in PDF format is created and added as an attachment to the purchase invoice.
Post-processing of the scanned paper material
After scanning, the paper invoices are kept in an information-protected space for 2 months. After that period, they are disposed of by chipping to class 3 (10 x 10 mm) in accordance with DIN 32 757 protection classification. All chips are submitted for recycling in accordance with the Waste Management Act.