DynamicPoint Blog
Process Employee Expense Reports Directly From Microsoft Teams
DynamicPoint’s Employee Expense Management Automation application, EasyEXP365, is fully integrated with Microsoft Teams and allows all aspects of the employee expense management process to be managed directly from the Teams App. Let’s take a look at each of these steps and how DynamicPoint leverages Microsoft Teams.
Receipt Capture
Employees can use the Teams interface to capture expense receipts, as well as create expense reports and code the line items to the appropriate expense types. DynamicPoint’s Expense Management application leverages SharePoint libraries for receipt capture. As SharePoint libraries are available as an app on Teams, receipts can be submitted for processing directly:
Processing
The most challenging aspect of managing employee expenses is making sure the costs get allocated to the correct GL accounts. While this can occur automatically using OCR, employees can still review the results and ensure their accuracy, as well as add any missing attachments.
Review and Approval
EasyEXP365 uses Microsoft Power Automate to route employee expense reports to the appropriate reviewers based on the approval matrix. Review tasks assigned to managers can be administered directly from the activity feed or the Approval app in Teams. That way approvers can review their outstanding expense reports directly from the Teams interface.
As you can see our integration with Microsoft Teams entails every step in the receipt capture, processing and approval steps included in the automation of employee expense reimbursement. The last step is the integration of the expense report with the ERP application, which our product performs in a real-time fashion after the last step in the approval process.
Employee Expense Management Post COVID
Are you currently getting value out of your existing Employee Expense Management solution? In a post-COVID world, businesses we have spoken to are saying no. The solutions they are using typically charge per user, yet most of their employees are no longer travelling or travelling a lot less. This amounts to wasted investments in an area that is not generating a lot of return, making now a great time to take a step back and reevaluate a better option.
One option is leveraging what you already own. If your company is using Office 365, you already have a robust receipt management system, workflow, and OCR solution at your fingertips. DynamicPoint’s expense management app, EasyEXP365, adds to what you already have and offers a fully functional employee expense management platform that offers endless workflow capability and business process adaptability, at a fraction of the cost of competitive solutions.
EasyEXP365 takes advantage of SharePoint libraries and their flexibility for employees to submit receipts into the system. Email, mobile upload, or portal entry are just some of the methods for your employees to capture their receipts. Office 365 OCR and Power Automate workflows automate the recognition of key receipt data and routing of the employee’s expense report to managers for approval. Upon final approval, EasyEXP365 integrates the report with your accounting or ERP system for employee reimbursement.
The resulting process looks like this:
Contact us if you are interested….
Accounts Payable Invoice Automation and Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
OCR is a technology utilized to recognize and extract key data fields from image files, and a productive tool for invoice automation. Invoices are generally received via pdf files, or are scanned in from a paper invoice, and manually input. This can lead to multiple errors and tedious work. By using automatic extraction of key fields, a lot of time and effort can be saved.
For AP invoices, OCR technology can be separated into two main methods for data extraction, traditional zonal OCR and intelligent word recognition. The time-tested zonal process maps invoices to templates that identify key fields based on their location on the page, while the word recognition process looks for key terms such as invoice number, date, total, etc. Word recognition is more convenient to setup, since there are no required templates that must be adjusted any time a vendor changes their invoice format, however, the results are generally not as reliable as zonal OCR.
As each method has its advantages and drawbacks, a new market of cloud-based OCR engines has emerged that combines both of these technologies to provide reliable results without the need for vendor template configuration. DynamicPoint has integrated these technologies with its Office 365 based Invoice Automation solution, EasyAP365. Test your own invoices directly from our product page: EasyAP365. Scroll down to the Frequently Asked Questions section and follow the link found in “How well does OCR work?”
Portals for Resellers and Distributors
DynamicPoint has seen considerable growth in distribution companies leveraging its Office 365 Portal application to collaborate with customers and vendors. The distribution industry can benefit greatly from self-service portals as there is a constant need to collaborate with many parties over complex supply chain processes. This can be further complicated when a third party logistic organization is utilized, as yet another entity is involved in the fulfillment process.
From the customer side, a portal is desired for distributors to enter orders and see the fulfillment and shipping details of their existing orders. On the vendor side, suppliers, including 3rd party logistic companies, can receive and confirm purchase orders, update expected delivery dates and provide shipping details.
The process below is a fairly typical one for a distribution company leveraging DynamicPoint’s Office 365 portal app to collaborate with resellers and a 3rd party logistic provider.
Since the communication is now supported with a customer and portal framework, it takes out the manual effort associated to sending spreadsheets and emails between the various parties. Customers and vendors have secure access to their data using a 24/7 self-service portal.
Invoice Automation for Construction Companies
If there is one thing that is specific to the construction industry – they process a lot of invoices. The nature of the business utilizes multiple subcontractors/vendors, all of which submit their invoices for payment to the general contractor. When these invoices get submitted, subcontractors expect payment almost immediately. The volume and speed of this accounts payable cycle puts a lot of pressure on the AP department to receive, process, and pay invoices in a rapid fashion.
In an industry where mobility, and an on-site workforce, require flexibility in invoice submission, DynamicPoint has stepped in with its Invoice Automation solution, EasyAP365. Invoices can be submitted in various different options, including using contractors’ mobile phones, a vendor portal, or the more traditional email submission. If invoices are being received by project managers, a check request process can be put in place such that they can be submitted in a consistent format.
The EasyAP365 platform also offers job costing integration with leading ERP systems. AP, or reviewing project managers, can specify job and task details, as well as compare invoices to existing job budgets.
The resulting process, more streamlined and managed, looks something like this:
DynamicPoint Releases New AP Automation Case Study with Fast Growing Midstream Company
Moda Midstream, LLC (“Moda”) is a liquids terminaling and logistics company that provides independent terminal, storage and distribution solutions to refiners, petrochemical manufacturers, marketers, and producers of crude oil and other bulk liquids along the US Gulf Coast. The company has seen substantial growth after an acquisition in 2018 along with multiple ongoing expansion projects. During this time, the number of vendors jumped from 150 to 480 and average invoices handled increased from 50 to 200 per week.
As Moda was already running Microsoft Dynamics as their ERP, they wanted an invoice automation solution that would be closely integrated. DynamicPoint proved to be a perfect fit. The accounting team could route invoices for approval leveraging DynamicPoint’s EasyAP365 Office 365 based application. The implementation team created Power Automate workflows that reduced the frequency of emails and sped up approval processes. They also configured reports to show any outstanding issues.
READ THE CASE STUDY to learn about the Solution and Results that
Moda Midstream, LLC took that helped them improve their vendor relations.
“It’s like magic! Everyone loves how easy the vendor invoice approval process is now.”
– Silvia Luis, Accounting & AP
Automate Contractor Expense Reimbursement with EasyAP365
Does your company need to reimburse expenses that are for external parties and not employees? The DynamicPoint EasyAP365 Invoice Automation solution can help. We have recently incorporated support for external contractors to submit expense reports either through a portal or email submission method for reimbursement. The expense reports are received in our Office 365 based Invoice Automation application for processing and workflow approval. Upon approval, they are integrated in real-time to your ERP system for payment.
The resulting solution looked like this:
The solution allowed our customers to automate a previously very manual and labor-intensive process and leverage Office 365 in conjunction with DynamicPoint’s EasyAP365 invoice automation solution.
DynamicPoint integrates EasyAP365 with Binary Stream Multi-Entity Management
DynamicPoint has partnered with Binary Stream Software to offer a full integration of our EasyAP365 Invoice Automation solution with Binary Stream’s Multi-Entity Management application. The Multi-Entity Management application allows Business Central and Dynamics GP users to streamline intercompany transactions and manage multiple legal entities all within a single company instance. This product is very useful for organizations that are managing a multi-tiered organization with shared service accounts payable processes. More about this product can be found here.
Thanks to the hard work of the DynamicPoint development team, you can now select these companies directly from the EasyAP365 application. Workflow can be configured to be organizational-based such that reviewers are defined by the organization they belong to. When the invoice is created in either Business Central or Dynamics GP, the Binary Stream application program interface (API) is leveraged to create a PO or non-PO invoice with the appropriate entities specified.
This effort is an integral part of the DynamicPoint software development roadmap, in that not only are we improving our integration with popular ERP applications, but also the key vendors that are often included in Microsoft Dynamics ecosystems.
DynamicPoint Expands ERP Integration with its EasyAP365 Invoice Automation Application
DynamicPoint has expanded the list of ERP applications that are supported with its Office 365 Invoice Automation Application. We are now proud to say our EasyAP365 Invoice Automation Application can be used seamlessly with the following systems:
- Microsoft Business Central
- Microsoft Dynamics NAV
- Microsoft Dynamics GP
- Microsoft Finance and Operations
- SAP, Business One, ByDesign, and NetWeaver Gateway
- Oracle
- Sage 200, 300, Cloud, and Intacct
- Acumatica
- Epicor
- NetSuite
- QuickBooks
One of the key criteria when evaluating any Invoice Automation system is whether or not it works with your ERP/Accounting Application. How well the systems communicate with each other will determine if information needs to be synchronized between the two, or if a real-time integration exists.
DynamicPoint’s preference is to leave all master data that is managed by the ERP system, in the ERP system. This includes vendor records, shipments, and purchase orders. As opposed to synchronizing this information, we query it directly from the system of record. When an invoice is approved and ready to be integrated, we call the product’s Application Program Interface (APIs) to automatically create the invoice in a real-time fashion. This is preferred to an export and import process that requires manual steps, duplicate data, and leaves the process open to inconsistency and errors.
Given our preference of real-time integration, we have mapped our Office 365 based AP Invoice Automation, EasyAP365, to several leading ERP and accounting systems. We leverage the industry standard in integration methodologies, namely using REST-based ODATA endpoints. As some systems don’t provide REST-based services natively, we leverage our partnership with a data access and connectivity company by the name of CDATA Software that provides standard adapters to leading ERP and accounting systems.
Don’t see your system on the list, please give us a call to discuss.
Manage Corporate Credit Cards with Office 365
Are you looking for an easy, cost-effective way to manage employee corporate credit card expenditures? For a lot of companies that we speak with, this process is manual and labor-intensive. It usually involves receiving a statement at the end of the month and then trying your best to email employees in an attempt to determine which accounts these expenditures should be assigned to. Depending on your volume, this process can be unmanageable and similar to herding cats.
Presented with this challenge DynamicPoint has created a Power App solution that automates this process, EasyEXP365. The solution entails the following:
- Credit card transactions are daily fed into Office 365 using a live feed with your banking institution
- These transactions are assigned to employees based on the card issued to them
- From a mobile or desktop Power App, employees can assign these transactions to the appropriate job or expense type (GL account)
- Coded transactions are routed for workflow (using Power Automate) or directly integrated with your ERP system as a journal entry
- Transactions are easily reconciled with the monthly statement when it is received
The process looks something like this:
Here is a screenshot of the employee’s Power App in which they can easily review their transactions, upload supporting receipts and submit for approval or integration into your accounting system:
Interested in Learning More About EasyEXP365?
EasyEXP365 product page OR Sign up for a Live One-on-One Demo