Case Study: Automating AP/AR Financial Processes

Overview

For the purposes of this Use Case, the focus is on Cash Management where Invoicing is generated within ITAS but Accounts Payable/Receivable facilities are managed in a 3rd party Financial Management system. This is typical in larger Enterprises, where the financing department can operate at a Corporate level and may or may not use ITAS for creating/matching Cash entries. Either way it is important that in this scenario Cash flows back into ITAS for a complete view on Client Risk.

See Case Study: Invoice Authorisation Integration for background to the Invoice notification process, as this shows how the request (for payment or expected receipt) would be generated out of ITAS.

Workflow Sample

For the purposes of this sample, it is assumed an invoice notification (in this case for a Purchase) has been processed in the external Treasury system. This workflow outlines the processes around creating the cash item and matching to the Invoice:

• Middleware request is directed to the PayableOnAccount endpoint identifying the document reference* and the amount to pay; full or part payment is derived by the transaction amount assigned
  
  
• This will result in a Cash Payment (CP) document being created with the reference being returned to the consuming service
  
  
• Request to Post CP can be made with a separate call to the AuthoriseForPosting endpoint
  
  
• Accounting document is posted in ITAS (matching to invoice where appropriate)

* there are alternate endpoints for other types of cash documents including Simple (PayableManual) and Pre-Payment Requests (PayableOnPrePayment), as well as equivalent functions for receivable cash items.

It is worth noting that when working via middleware it is possible to introduce bespoke processes into the workflow. For example, transforming data received through the SWIFT network will enable the ability to create cash items based on the MT940 Customer Statement message format.