Orca (04): Paperless A/P Processing, featuring DML

The Company

Orca Oz Enterprises are an unreal company whose staff bear an uncanny resemblance to the team at Orchid Systems. Orca has found many creative ways of using Orchid’s Sage 300 add-ons to solve everyday business problems. They have kindly agreed to let us publish a series of Case Studies. We call them the Chronicles of Orca.

Picture This

We know a picture is worth a thousand words, so we asked @Jimesey, Junior Freelance Designer at @pa_stek, to draw up a storyboard that illustrates the scenario we've described in more detail below. 

Tip: Would you like to see a bigger image? Depending on your device and browser try clicking it, or right-clicking then selecting 'Open image in new tab' or 'View Image'.

The Challenge

Orca's team have just started working from home due to COVID-19 lockdowns. With no face-to-face contact, and no access to the office printer, they need to find creative approaches to sharing information and efficiently performing everyday business tasks.

One of these challenges relates to the processing of Accounts Payable invoices.

• Sue enters all of Orca’s A/P Invoices into Sage 300.
• The CFO (Steve) must review all A/P Invoice Batches before they can be posted.
• Sue used to pass hardcopy invoices to Steve for checking, but this is no longer an option.

The Solution

Orca's solution provider has helped Orca to quickly and easily move to a paperless process using the following capability from Orchid Systems:

• Document Management Link (DML) lets staff easily load and share links to relevant documents within Sage 300
• Email SmartLink, a bonus feature available to all DML Users, lets you share hyperlinks to Sage 300 masterfile or transaction records by email
• After the review process has been completed, EFT Processing can be used to facilitate paperless payments

Scenario Walkthrough

Travel and face-to-face meetings have suddenly been banned. Nathalie, Orca’s Sales Manager, has been tasked with quickly finding a way for staff to stay in touch with each other. Her sales team also needs new ways to engage with their clients and sales prospects.

Nathalie recommends they try Zoom, and the Orca management team agrees.

• Nathalie takes out a Zoom subscription online using her credit card.
• She receives an invoice and receipt by email, and forwards these on to Sue.

Sue, Orca’s Office Manager, is responsible for recording all invoices in Sage 300, and ensuring all the supporting documentation is in order.

• Sue follows her normal processes to create a new Sage 300 A/P Vendor record for Zoom, then enters the invoice details into the A/P Invoice Entry screen.
• Document Management Link (DML) has been configured to allow documents to be associated with specific Vendors and Invoices.
• Sue drags and drops Nathalie’s email, as well as the attached invoice and receipt, directly into the DML panel that has been pinned to the A/P Invoice Entry screen.

While Sue is responsible for A/P data entry, their CFO, Steve, needs to personally review all invoices. He is also the only one who can post A/P Payment Batches.

• Sue has created an A/P Payment Batch for the Zoom invoice. She wants to let Steve know it is ready for review.
• She clicks the Email SmartLink icon, pastes in a link to the active Sage 300 record, adds a quick comment, and sends the email to Steve.

Steve opens and reads Sue’s email.

• With a single click on the Email SmartLink URL, Steve finds himself in Sage 300 looking at the new Payment Batch.
• While reviewing the Zoom invoice, he can see that the supporting documentation is available in the DML panel.
• He quickly completes his review and posts the batch.

With the batch posted, Susan can go ahead and complete her processing.

In this case, the Zoom invoice has already been paid by credit card, but for other payments Susan could have used Orchid EFT Processing to complete an entirely paperless cycle of A/P invoice and payment processing.

The Result

• Orca had been talking about going paperless for years, but progress had been slow as there always seemed to be something more urgent.
• With COVID-19 forcing their hand, and the help of Orchid’s Sage 300 add-ons, Sue and the team were pleasantly surprised at just how easy the final steps proved to be.