How to find late arrived invoices by using Basware tools?

Invoice date and arrival date in Basware is too far?

Invoices are sent usually when the item ships out from the warehouse. The invoice can be sent overnight once the ERP-system will have down time, and the services are run. Invoice date and actual date when the invoice is out from the system can be a different. The difference should not be more than one day on the cloud era of ERPs. Invoice sender should check how their system is processing invoices.

Invoice delivery times to the recipient are*

Paper invoice: 6 business days
Emailed invoice: 1 business day
E-invoice: less than 1 hour

* According to Basware study

In Basware invoices are collected from different sources to central invoice system. Most likely this central system is "Business Transactions" (BT). Basware gives access to users to this system to monitor invoice flows. BT is accessed via BT-Monitor online at bt.basware.com.

In BT-Monitor user can make a report where the report will tell the invoice's "invoice date" and see when the invoice has arrived to Basware's central system in the "arrival date" timestamp.

Follow these steps how to run a report of late arrived invoices

In this example the current date is 30AUG2018 and the idea is to see how many invoices arrived on August to the company that came too late in the first place. First running the report, and then analyzing the due dates. First is to find invoices that arrived late, and then by using the data and Basware tools to narrow it down.

Inside BT-Monitor after log-in:

Select "Search" from the side panel -> Sent Invoices or Incoming Invoices (either one will work)
- DATE: "Invoice date" (drop down menu) then select -> "Last month" (drop down menu)
- ARRIVAL DATE: "is after" (drop down menu) then select "8/5/18" from calendar
- MAX. ROWS: "500" -> then click "Search"
If max. rows are "500" and the search will pull and show "500 invoices found". This means, that there are more invoices. Add more to see all of the invoices - up to 10000.

Now the report is run from the BT-system. This can be exported as Excel file from "Export report results" link.

There are most likely several invoices, that have arrived on current month after giving 5 days to remove typical 1-2-day differences for invoice issued date. The report now has invoices, which are issued more than 5 days ago. It also considers the possibility having invoice sent as paper mail. Basware study has found that typical delivery for paper invoice is 6 days.

Next step is to have invoice numbers, which are inputted to the BT-Monitor.

If using Firefox, it's possible to "paint" Invoice Numbers by clicking CTRL + Right-Click on mouse. If using other web browsers, it's better to use Excel (export report from BT).

Copy all invoice numbers to Clipboard. Modify invoice numbers to a single line separated with "," (comma). Copy the invoice numbers to the clipboard.

Invoice numbers should be now as

12343456,783490,23234,1,345345,66456

Go back to BT-Monitor
Input invoice numbers "Invoice number" -> "is exactly" (drop down menu) -> Paste invoice numbers to the field
Modify "Date" from "Invoice date" to "Due date" (drop down menu) then select for example "last month"
Click "Search" (the max. rows are selected as 10000 from earlier report)

Now it should be clear what can be run from the BT-Monitor to narrow it down. Play with the Due Date selection to find out critical invoices by your need. Flag critical suppliers and follow their performance. Also remember to act, for example contacting the supplier to inform this issue. It's also good to remind suppliers of the different possibilities to send an invoice. Supplier may not be aware of the email possibility.

In below image the report will show:

Invoice date is previous month "July", as this was run earlier -> selected invoice numbers to be used in this advanced report

Due date is between 5.-18.8 (August) which is the current month when report is run from the system (actual date is 30.8. when reporting)

Invoice has arrived to Basware from different sources on 5.8.

Invoice has been delivered between 5.-18.8

Amount on this example is 162 invoices! It means, that there is too little time to process invoice to meet due date. What it also means is that there is an issue from the supplier side to make sure that the invoice is delivered on time to meet payment terms and give fair chance to the buyer to process the invoice according to processes in place. Study shows that in big corporations one invoice needs at least two weeks to process from arrival to the payment.

The report will show the names of the suppliers, and those should be contacted to make changes in their invoicing processes.