On June 6, 2019, at Smau Bologna R2B, Top Consult held a workshop, where for the occasion, TPV Compound, a leading company in the production of PVC compounds and Top Consult customer for over 15 years, was invited as a guest. The workshop focused on the analysis, through a concrete case, on how electronic invoicing has contributed to making the management of the account receivables leaner and more intuitive and automated the management of the account payables to achieve a total integration with the company ERP system, this putting the basis for a future and imminent digitalization of the entire work process, allowing decision-makers, called to approve a document or item, to work in a simple and intuitive way.
Says Roberto Zambelli, ICT Manager of TPV Compound: “When 2 companies collaborate with each other creating a complete synergy, it is no longer a customer-supplier based relationship, but these are 2 companies working together to achieve a perfect level of integration”
As a result of this collaboration, the integration between Microsoft Dynamics NAV2016 with the TopMedia Social NED platform has been obtained.
ACCOUNT RECEIVABLES: Orders, Bills of Lading, Packing List, Quality Certificates
NAV features a “send confirmation via email” function in sales orders which, when activates, triggers two events:
- The order is seamlessly archived on TopMedia Social NED.
- After being archived, the order is sent by email from TopMedia Social NED to the end customer (if the order is modified several times, TopMedia Social NED always archives the latest updated version).
When the active Bill of lading is created, NAV takes care of archiving the document on TopMedia (via webservices), together with the Packing List and all the certificates that must accompany the goods. In this case, no sending by email is foreseen.
ACCOUNT RECEIVABLES: Electronic Invoicing
When non-electronic pre-invoices are confirmed and become official invoices, a task is automatically started, performing the following two steps:
- Archiving of the invoice on TopMedia Social NED;
- Email the copy of the courtesy invoice in PDF format to the customer via TopMedia Social NED.
When electronic pre-invoices become official invoices, NAV creates the XML file and sends it to TopMedia Social NED, which takes care of managing the relationship with the SDI Exchange System. A implemented function ensures that both from the list of invoices and in the detail of the single document, to know the status of the sending to the SDI, a fundamental function for administrative clerks.
ACCOUNT PAYABLES: Bills of Lading, Goods receipt procedure
On AP Bills of lading, after scanning when papery, the barcode label is rasterized with a unique number and automatically archived on TopMedia Social NED. In the NAV goods receipt procedure, a metadata has been added: this will receive the value of the rasterized barcode. When the reception procedure is confirmed NAV takes all the bill of lading data (supplier code, company name, BOL number and date, number and date of the “internal” document) and “adds” them to the BOL archived on Top Media Social NED.
ACCOUNT PAYABLE: Electronic Invoicing
The fundamental problems for supplier electronic invoices were:
- – A quick and easy way to be able to open the XML document in a readable way had to be found;
- – Since supplier invoices can arrive at any time, a way was needed to know which ones were still to be posted.
“To achieve this result, we developed a function that, when we open the invoice posting procedure on NAV establishes a connection to TopMedia Social NED, and then loads and displays the list of invoices still to be posted. From the list we choose a supplier invoice and activate a special function that automatically completes the header of the invoice itself (supplier data), the subtotal on NAV and at the same time opens the XML invoice in a window, using the Style sheet of TopMedia Social NED (it was our choice to decide that the detail of the invoice should be entered manually by reading the document open on screen, in truth TopMedia Social NED is also capable to read and the details and additional information). Once the passive invoice is confirmed, the information that characterizes it (the internal document number, the protocol number, the registration date, the VAT ledger) is archived in TopMedia Social NED; in this way that document will be removed from the list of invoices to be posted. The list of invoices to be posted also shows if the document belongs to a supplier who has not yet been coded.”
All account receivables and payables documents, when opened on NAV, trigger a “on the fly” PDF retrieving function from TopMedia Social NED. The complete integration with NAV requires that all the uploaded or listed documents are managed by a series of scheduled activities to interface with TopMedia Social NED; the dialogue between the two systems is constant and always updated.
