The Invoice Management Workflow

A typical workflow for invoice management is shown below. The illustration describes the workflow for invoices from a travel agency; a similar workflow would exist for invoices from a travel service supplier or payment card issuer:

When a trip is booked in the Travel tool, a corresponding order reference (in the form TVLDxx-nnnn) is created. This reference is transmitted to the travel agency handling the ticketing, and is registered in the agency’s invoice data.

The files containing the invoice statements are transmitted from the travel agency via the inbound interface, specified during initial configuration by the Traveldoo Implementation team. The service items associated with the order reference, as well as the agency fees, are automatically reconciled with (that is, matched with) the order reference.

If automated reconciliation does not succeed (for example, if the order reference is not found in an invoice file), the Invoice module attempts an adjustment to match a service item with user details found in the invoice statement, such as an Employee ID or a name-and-surname combination. If automated adjustment is not successful, manual adjustment is possible via the user interface of the Invoice module (see Adjusting an Invoice).

For analytical purposes, the cost of a service item (airfare, train fare etc.) in an invoice can be distributed between two or more cost objects, such as cost centres, project codes or company departments. For more information, see Performing Cost Allocation.

The Invoice module workflow configuration allows for invoices to be automatically approved if no anomalies are detected (see Configuring Invoice Management). If anomalies are detected, or if manual approval is specified in the configuration, you can manually approve or dispute an invoice (see Approving or Disputing Invoices). Manual approval involves verifying that the travel-related expenses, agency fees, budgetary cost allocations and related receipts are valid before approving the invoice. You can also recall an approved or disputed invoice, provided that it has not been exported to an external accounting system.

Approved and disputed invoices can optionally be exported to your company’s accounting system, either for payment (approved invoices) or further action (disputed invoices). The files containing invoice data for export are transmitted to the accounting system via the outbound interface, specified during initial configuration by the Implementation team. The export process is performed from the Expense module - for more information, see the Expense User Guide on the Traveldoo Support site at https://support.traveldoo.com/hc/en-gb.

See Also