Electronic submission of documents, including invoices, is already standard practice in interactions between business partners. A structured invoice is therefore nothing new, but rather an attempt by the Ministry of Finance (MF) to standardize the scope and format of data required on this document. This obligation can be turned to your advantage. Since all purchase invoices are received electronically, why not go a step further and streamline their circulation by automating receipt, acceptance, accounting, and storage? We present the Rockawork solution for managing this process and describe the integration options with SAP.
Rockawork is a platform that enables the digitization of many business processes. The low-code approach used enables advanced users to design processes themselves, without involving developers or external consultants, making it short and cost-effective to deliver the solution required by the business. In addition, the solution is available in the form of a mobile application, in which the user himself can lay out the layout of components on a smaller screen.
Many built-in features are used to make it easier to navigate and work with the solution.
Presenting the workflow of a purchase invoice from a supplier in Rockawork, sent via the solution All for One KSeF from the Ministry of Finance and its posting in SAP.
Rockawork queries KSeF Hub for invoices from our suppliers. The invoice downloaded from KSeF is transferred to Rockawork and processed further. It is possible to model even a complex and multi-stage document acceptance process. For the purpose of this article, we will describe a simple example consisting of three basic steps.
The first step is substantive verification and cost decreeing by the responsible employee. Then the invoice is approved by the supervisor. In the background, an accounting document is automatically created in SAP using a robot (RPA) or interface. The final step is the accounting verification of the invoice and posting it in SAP.
Rockawork’s operation is very intuitive. On the left side, there is easy access to applications assigned to the user (e.g., workflow, tasks, documents, OCR, barcode generation, etc.). User tasks are clearly visible, and overdue tasks are highlighted in red.
The employee who accepts and verifies the invoice begins the task by entering edit. From this level, he sees a preview of the document and the relevant information necessary for substantive verification: accepted from KSeF, supplier, invoice number, net and gross value, invoice items. In the next step, he performs the invoice decrement. It is possible to decree to the appropriate MPK, to General Ledger accounts or to controlling orders. It is also possible to break one item into multiple MPKs or multiple orders, or to assign multiple General Ledger accounts to one item.
In addition, each user has a special field in which to enter relevant information or comments on the invoice. This information is visible to the next participant in the process. At each stage, we can see where the invoice is in the process at the moment. The possible endings: accept, reject or redirect to another person, are also fully customizable.
The next step is approval of the invoice by the supervisor. He also sees his task list. After entering the task, the supervisor has access to the same information about the invoice as the previous employee. If necessary, he can make changes to the decrement and leave his comments. Like any other participant in the process, he can view its progress.
We have moved one step forward in the process. We are at the stage of business approval of this invoice. At this stage, once it is accepted, an accounting document is automatically created in SAP.
The next step is accounting. A good practice is to create an accounting account in Rockawork and set up group tasks. In practice, this means that all users from the accounting department see all open and already processed invoices. Once a task is taken by a department member, it disappears from the group task list, preventing duplication of work. Similar to previous users, accounting sees all relevant elements of this invoice, plus an additional one – the accounting document in SAP.
This is the final element in our model process, where the involvement of the Rockawork tool concludes. The result is the invoice being guided through all defined steps (the approval path can be significantly longer, depending on conditions such as the invoice amount), the automatic creation of an accounting document in SAP, and the retention of a record in the form of a saved history of the entire process, including information about involved individuals, comments, and the time taken for each step.
Integration with SAP is possible in various ways, depending on client needs (interface, bot). It is worth noting that the invoice is physically stored in Rockawork – an ECM class system (ECM Content Server) – and its preview in SAP (PDF file) is made available from this level. This prevents the system from being overloaded.
Once the purchase invoice has been received in the SAP system, various approaches to integration with All for One KSeF are possible. We present the three most typical options.
The first is a minimum approach. Documents are automatically and periodically downloaded from All for One KSeF Hub and transferred to the environment we are currently working in. These can be, for example, MIRO or FB 60 transactions. The system pre-populates the FI or MM document header (along with order/delivery allocations). For an MM document, it is important to read the .xml file with references to orders or deliveries and prepare them for manual posting. Further invoice processing takes place as before (e.g., currently implemented workflow or the All for One InvoiceFlow tool). Naturally, the ability to generate an invoice view is crucial.
In this approach, accounting operates within traditional SAP transactions. No additional licenses or bots are required. This is the fastest and simplest path to integration with KSeF.
In the second variant, the maximum impact of the document into SAP is fully automated. The electronic structured invoice, in a sense, does the work of OCR, so that the processing of the document from the initial stage is automatic, including items and decrements. If certain boundary conditions are met, it is even possible to automatically post the invoice.
It should be noted, however, that there are quite a few of these conditions, for example, references must be written out in detail to the opposition, and a KSeF structured document by default has these references only in the header. Therefore, you can require the supplier to put the necessary information in an additional field on the item in the .xml document. Another solution is to set up heuristics, such as recognizing items by material or EAN number. The same is true for tax codes. There is potential to define them in orders, for example, and completely automate the process. However, this approach requires an SAP Indirect Access license or a bot implementation.
Hybrid approaches, combining both of the above options, are also possible, such as automatic posting of invoices only from a key bulk supplier with whom we have established standard rules of communication, and from the other contractors only the header is taken.
It is worth noting that in both approaches – minimum and maximum – the All for One KSeF solution is invisible to the user, running in the background. It can be integrated with the standard SAP workflow used in the company or another custom solution (e.g. All for One InvoiceFlow), to which it serves as a source of pre-entered documents.
The third approach is to use the All for One KSeF solution directly. It assumes cyclic automatic downloading of documents from KSeF Hub and then handling them directly in the KSeF Monitor (e.g. entering items, saving orders, tax codes, decrements). This is also where posting or initial invoice entry takes place. Of course, it is possible to generate an invoice view. No additional SAP licenses are required for this variant.
The challenge of fully integrating SAP with KSeF is the large number of variants of SAP MM configurations at customers and established accounting standards and rules.
Differences may be in the following areas:
Header Mapping:
Position mapping:
Due to significant configuration differences, we adopt a flexible approach to integration projects, including the preparation of tailor-made concepts, utilizing processes already implemented within the Rockawork organization, All for One InvoiceFlow, SAP Workflow, or SAP Flexible Workflow available in the S/4HANA system. It is also possible to combine the All for One KSeF implementation project with the implementation of our InvoiceFlow solution, which supports electronic invoice circulation in SAP.
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