It is mandatory to define who is the relevant user to whom to send the invoices, in order to optimize the billing process. For this, we use the VIM Roles. VIM Roles refer to the grouping of users according to their activity within the company, above all, taking into account the needs of the invoice process.
VIM Roles and Business Rules
In a previous post, we talked about Business Rules, which consist of a sequence of checks applied to the invoice data. These checks are applied in order of relevance, from highest to lowest severity of the incident that prevents the posting of the invoice. When a Business Rule is not met, an exception is generated to be resolved and the corresponding users are notified.
It is at this time that the VIM Roles become relevant. When an invoice needs a data to be corrected or added in order to be accounted for, it must reach the appropriate user to do so directly. And for that, the Roles are defined and assigned to the different groups of users. The most common user groups (or roles) tend to coincide with the different departments within companies, such as “Accounts Payable”, “Purchases”, “Warehouse”, and so on. In addition to this, roles can also be created for specific tasks.
Roles are used so that invoices with “exceptions to resolve” are assigned to the appropriate users. This is possible thanks to each Business Rule having an associated initial role to which the invoice will be sent in case the rule generates an exception.
The assignment of roles can be done by grouping users and assigning them the roles according to a company, a supplier, etc. or, by means of a function that will determine he user according to the desired parameters. For example, the role of “AP_PROCESSOR” may be assigned to a group of the Accounts Payable team depending on the company code. In other words, for each company there is a group of users with this role who will receive the invoices from said company in their inbox with exceptions whose initial role is “AP_PROCESSOR”.
This way, the exceptions related to “Purchases” or “Warehouse” will go directly to users of those roles who are the ideal ones to solve them, and thus, the route of the invoice is optimized, avoiding so to have the invoice stuck or unable to be posted.
If you want to know more about Vendor Invoice Management, how it works, its advantages, etc. do not hesitate to contact us!
