Automatically Approving P/O Variances

Automatically Approving Invoices with Purchase Order Variances

Use the Auto Approve P/O Variances utility to run a comparison of an invoice to a purchase order that was open and appeared in the Purchase Order Variance Queue, but is now received. If the payable vendor is set to Auto A/P Approve in the Vendor Check Information window in Vendor Maintenance, the utility compares the open amount posted on the payable to the total on the received purchase order generation.

If the amounts are an exact match or are within the vendor’s over/short parameters, the utility does the following:

Reconciles the purchase order to the payable. The utility does not reconcile under the following conditions:

A cost or quantity variance has already been resolved for the purchase order.
The variance has already been resolved
There is no open amount posted on the payable
The order is a direct
Multiple purchase orders are found for one payable
Multiple payables are found for one purchase order
The purchase order has not been received
There are multiple generations on the purchase order, unless you select to match multiple received generations when you run the utility.
A purchase order has multiple unapplied receipts that are an exact match to the vendor invoice. Example:

The invoice is for $25.00 and there are two received gens at $25.00 each. In this case the system does not match the invoices because it cannot tell to which generation the invoice applies.
A purchase order has multiple unapplied receipts that match within tolerance to the vendor invoice. Example:

The invoice is for $24.99 and there are two received generations one for $25.00 and one for $24.90. The invoice is within the tolerance assigned for the vendor, however the system does not match because it cannot tell to which generation the invoice applies. The gens do not have to be identical cost to prevent a match, they just have to both be within tolerance.
There are Lot items on the order
Vendor is not flagged for Auto A/P Approve
Difference in totals is beyond the vendor's over/short parameters
Accounting periods for the purchase order or payable are closed
Someone is already viewing or editing the payable record

Approves the payable and sets the Approved field in the A/P Preview Queue to Approved.

Note: For a vendor invoice that has been applied to both a received generation and an open purchase order generation flagged as "Apply When Received," after you receive the open generation, the Auto Approve P/O Variances utility matches and approves the vendor invoice if the total of the applied receipts is an exact match to the vendor invoice amount and is within the over/short parameters.

The report excludes payable already paid, cancelled, or already approved.

When checking for write off amounts, the system checks the negative to positive amounts within the indicated dollar amount. This means, if you enter $25.00 in the Maximum Dollar field, the system checks from -$25.00 up to $0.00 and then to $25.00 for amounts to write off.

If the payable vendor does not have over/short parameters defined in their vendor record, the system uses the parameters defined in the A/P Over/Short Maximum Parameters or the A/P Auto Post To Over & Short If Within Variancecontrol maintenance records. If a match is found, but is outside of the over/short parameters, the payable is not approved.

Note: The system looks for matches only to received purchase orders and no backordered items. A purchase order is indicated as received in the Received column in the A/P Preview Queue.

To automatically approve invoices that had a P/O variance:

From the A/P menu, select A/P Preview Queue and enter the criteria to view the invoices you want to approve.

From the File menu, select Auto Approve PO Variances and do one of the following:

Select the Auto Approve PO Variances with Multiple Received Gens check box to run the utility to check single generation purchase orders and multiple generation purchase orders for matches on the total dollar amount of the invoice. If you leave the check box deselected, the system looks for matches only for single generation purchase orders.

Click Run to compare the open amounts to the received purchase order generations with variances for the selected invoices. Select whether to run the utility to approve just the current row or all rows that meet the approval criteria.

Click Schedule to schedule the utility to run as often as you like to complete the comparisons and process in the back ground. For more information, see Scheduling Phantom Processes.

After you run the utility, the system clears any resolved variances from the P/O Variance Queue and approves the payables that it is able to approve. The approved payables display with the Approved field set to Approve in the A/P Preview Queue. Those invoices are now ready to be paid. The system displays a message that includes how many invoices it processes and how many invoices it approved. The system also sends a report to your hold file with the details.

If the invoice still has the warning icon

in the Status column after the utility runs, then the accounts payable user has to manually associate the payable to the correct purchase order generation. If the vendor invoice does not match the purchase order, then an accounts payable person completes the Vendor Qty, Vendor UOM, and Vendor Extended Cost in the purchase from the invoice into purchase order entry. This could create a new purchase order variance and would be placed back in the Purchase Order Variance Queue for resolution.