Synergize Accounts Payable

The Transflo Synergize Accounts Payable (AP) solution allows you to monitor the flow of vendor invoices and other payable documents through a workflow that specifically supports close monitoring of expenses and approval at various levels organized by cost center.

  • The starting point for the solution is to set up a repository as an Accounts Payable repository. This option is available when you first create the repository and it enables the AP-specific features described in this section.

  • You also need to set up a workflow using Workflow Designer and configure your cost centers and users in the portal application. Portal is a platform where you can install applications called portlets. Portlets include:

    • AP Portlet

    • Driver Recruitment

    • Report Viewer

Different pieces are assembled to provide the Accounts Payable solution.

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The first step in configuring an accounts payable scenario is to use the AP Portlet to set up Users, approval groups, and cost centers. This configuration can be uploaded into the AP Portlet, from an AP excel format v3.xlsx file.

The accounts payable module itself modifies Synergize Workflow to allow for special processing to move a document to another user (approver), without moving it to the next queue. It also adds the repository forms user interface to enter metadata for documents in the Synergize repository.

In the special AP workflow, you can view the invoice, approve it, approve it (above your limit), change its cost center, or reject it. You can use a special mobile app called Mobile Workflow, to be notified of pending requests for approval and perform the viewing and AP workflow functions remotely.

Finally, Synergize Process Server is used for a variety of processing tasks, including notifications for Mobile Workflow and producing output that can be used with third-party tools like TMT, Truckmate, and Dynamics GP.

Accounts Payable repositories have additional specific logging to keep a snapshot of the important values such as the purchase amount (purchaseAmt) and the Approver Limit at the time of the approval. This logging is particularly useful in situations where approvers approve some invoices and then get their approval limits reduced. Without logging, it may seem like they were able to approve invoices that were above their limits.

Logged information includes the approver, the purchase amount, the cost center code, the cost center group name, the cost center group limit, and the approval answer (approve/reject/etc...). The log entry also references the Workflow Log ID, associated with the workflow processing of the document.

Synergize Workflow Designer is a tool that helps you to create the business steps that you want your invoices and purchase orders to move through, when approvals are used. Some workflows are designed to be as simple as possible: inbox to approved or rejected. Many other workflows have business-specific exceptions and special processing.

  • Users: Users have approval limits and are members of an approval group.

  • Approval Groups: Approval groups can be assigned to cost centers.

  • Cost Centers: A code that matches with the external accounting system or TMS to group costs.

  • Actions: By convention, four (4) basic actions can be performed on any Accounts Payable (AP) document:

    1. Approve

    2. Approve (above limit)

    3. Send back for correction (wrong cost center or user)

    4. Reject

With the Accounts Payable solution, an action does not necessarily move a document into a new queue, as it would in a normal workflow processing step. Approve could move the document to the next approver in an approval chain.

Approve (above the approver limit) means that a secondary approval will be needed, regardless. If the document was indexed incorrectly, associating it with the wrong cost center for example, then the document could be moved into an error queue, but it could just be assigned to the indexer for correction.