This help article will help you set up the Invoice Inbox and start getting your invoices read; for fast and easy processing. So let’s get you started.
To have access to the Invoice Inbox; you need to have full permissions for invoices – create; edit; delete and view. You must also have the “Finance” or “Admin” role in every division of one or more Business Units or have “Tenancy Admin” status in order to be able to access the inbox.
If you are on a Trial; you will have full access from the start.
For other users; If they have “Finance” or “Admin” roles for every division of multiple Business Units; you can process invoices for multiple companies. You will only be able to see invoices for the Business Units that you are assigned to. If you are unsure what this means; read the article on user management.
Setting up the Inbox email
You can generate your own @zaharamail.com email address for your vendors to send their invoices. Zahara will then extract any attachments contained within the email and present them within the Invoices Inbox. Once an invoice arrives in the inbox; provided you have invoice OCR count left; the invoices will be automatically read for you.
Head to Business Settings > Invoice Inbox and generate an email address for that Business Unit. You can have any unique address. We recommend you use your company name or a variant like
zahara_invoices@zaharamail.com
Test it straight away. Email a PDF attachment to this email address. It should then appear in the Invoices Inbox. You access the inbox from the Documents menu. Documents > Invoice Inbox.
There is no other way to see these emails but anything emailed with attachments to that address should appear in the Inbox. If you are all set here; No other emails should be sent to this address – they will be ignored and lost.
Forwarding addresses
Zahara supports you forwarding invoices from your own email account so in the Email field; put all of the emails that may forward emails. We will only use the domain part of the email so just one domain email should be sufficient. What happens here is that for a forwarded email; we will check to see if the sender’s email domain is in this record. If it is we will skip and start reading the body of the email until we find an email address that matches a vendors email address. These are effectively “exclude” email addresses
Vendor Matching
A key thing for accurate vendor matching is to have relevant vendor email addresses recorded against each vendor. It could be that you send purchase orders to one address but get invoices from another. Make sure you record the invoice email addresses in the vendor record. When Zahara receives an email into the inbox it attempts to match the vendor and it will do this on the email address. You can populate the vendor email addresses as you go as well. You will notice the option of saving the email address against the vendor record.
If no email address matches we will look at the OCR results (assuming you have invoice count and the invoice has been read). We will fuzzy match the results with the vendor records we hold for this business unit. If there is a successful match then the vendor record will be populated. This accommodates a multi-page invoice PDF being emailed into Zahara as well. Invoices will be separated and vendors matched.
Some invoices don’t have a vendor name clearly displayed – they may use a logo – so if we cannot find a match; the vendor record will be set to the very first vendor in your list; or left blank. It’s very important when processing invoices that users do cross-check with their eyes this first piece of key information.
If for any reason an invoice is processed against the wrong vendor; you can edit it and change it later on. Just make sure it hasn’t been exported already before you do this.
Using the Inbox
Invoices will start to appear in your Inbox and the first thing Zahara does is try to match the Business Unit based on the To address of the email and matching that with the value in your Business Settings. Matching the vendor is relatively easy if you have a valid email address stored in the vendor record. Examples below:
You process the invoice by clicking the icon next to the delete icon – the arrow pointing forward. You can adjust the columns in the usual way by clicking the table icon.
On the next screen; you can either click through and process; or make changes and save them; with the document remaining in the Inbox.
PO Matching
If purchase orders are enabled; and the OCR recognition has identified a valid PO number; it will be displayed in the Purchase Orders box. You can manually select an order here as well.
Editing
All other fields can be edited. Typically though this is a checking screen and you will want to click Continue
Create Screen
You now move into the Invoice create screen. This has different sections. The screen shot below shows the invoice line items. You can switch between the lin item edit mode and table view. Click the table icon on the right to see all of the lines.
From here you can edit line items; header fields or any custom fields. When ready click Continue to move on and add comments; set the workflow or add any additional documents.
Finally click continue; check the summary and then click Create. The switch at the bottom will allow you to go straight back to the Inbox.
Line items editing
You can edit each line item individually by clicking the edit icon. You can also batch change the line items by selecting them and clicking the “Update Line” icon. This will allow you to change coding; and other fields all at once.
Tax Adjustment
If you need to make a minor adjustment to a tax line; you can do this in the line item edit view. Edit the line; and then mouse over to the tax amount as shown below:
Excluded Documents
Zahara excludes all email signature images and most terms and conditions documents. If you have a vendor that sends a separate T&C PDF and it’s still getting through here; let us know the file name and we will add it to the exclude list. This is why we recommend always referencing a T&C in a PO and Invoice with a hyperlink and not a separate document.