Automating Purchase Invoices Workflow Example

January, 2022

We all carry out lots of repeatable tasks during our working life, many of which involve paper documents and a logical set of rules. Workflow software, or as it's also known BPM (Business Process Management) software, allows us to create the business process, with all of its relies and logic in a paperless environment. Users would normally interact with the workflow process via email or a web portal on their intranet.

Benefits of this type of system range from reduction in labour costs, faster processing of tasks, accountability and ability to remodel a business process rapidly.

Formate eVo Workflow

Workflow software offers many attractive benefits and associated savings. However many products on the market are expensive and complex and only suitable for large corporate companies with big budgets and IT resources.

Formate eVo, whilst not a dedicated workflow tool, can perform simple workflow functionality at a fraction of the cost. Formate eVo can follow a predefined set of rules and has interfaces into email clients & servers, MS Excel, XML, Adobe LiveCycle Designer and MS SharePoint (web portal); all of which can be used to build a workflow process.

Formate eVo isn't suitable for very complex workflows with thousands of users across a very large organisation and for this environment we would always recommend a dedicated workflow product. However, in many instances Formate eVo can work well, for a fraction of the cost.

Suitable Formate eVo workflow applications may be:

• Purchase Requisitions
• Holiday Request Forms
• Customer Complaints
• Customer Request for Information
• Engineering Change Notes
• Supplier Invoice Approval
• Distributing Incoming Post Electronically

An example application:

Before placing an official purchase order, an employee must raise a purchase requisition which then needs authorisation by his/her immediate manager. Depending on the value (e.g. over £10,000), the purchase order may then need signing off by a company director. The existing paper process is time-consuming, poorly controlled and often results in lost purchase requisitions. If approvers are on holiday it stops working completely until that member of staff returns to work.

The new Formate eVo process allows the employee to raise an electronic purchase order requisition, using either MS Excel or an intelligent Adobe LifeCycle Form (this appears like a PDF document but is a form template that can be filled in). The spreadsheet or Adobe Form allows the employee to fill in all the relevant details (supplier name, product, unit cost etc), and then submit the completed document via email.

The electronic purchase requisition is automatically emailed to the Formate eVo server which reads the document and extracts the data. In the case of the Adobe Form, it reads the XML data file which contains the data entered into the form. Formate eVo then decides, depending on the employee and cost, which managers or directors are required to approve the purchase requisition. The workflow process a document follows is decided by Formate eVo once it refers to a lookup table or database containing all the employees, managers and directors. Formate eVo emails to the relevant people with a copy of the purchase requisition, requesting approval. The recipient can then accept or reject the purchase requisition. This is achieved by either answering the email with the word accept or reject or amending a field on the original purchase requisition. Further notes may also be added to the body of the email or in a specific area on the purchase requisition.

When the email is returned, Formate eVo then relays the message appropriately and either sends the originator an acceptance message, telling them to proceed or passing them a rejection notice. Electronic signatures could also be incorporated into this process if Adobe LiveCycle Designer was used for the purchase requisition.

This system has many benefits:

Firstly, it eliminates the paper chain. Secondly, it allows an administrator to instantly tell where a purchase requisition is in the workflow process. The process also copes with staff leaving the company or taking holidays. If the approver is substituted in the Formate eVo approver roles database, then Formate eVo will automatically route it to a substitute approver.

This is one example that hopefully provides an insight into what can be achieved for very little cost, using Formate eVo. Please call us on 01604 671177 to chat about any other business automation ideas that you may have.