Capture invoices with Dynamics 365 for Financials

With Dynamics 365 for Financials you can have your invoices converted to electronic invoices using an invoice capture (OCR) service, thereby avoiding tedious, error-prone and costly manual typing.

If you didn’t already know that, this blog post will help you get started.

Sign up for a Lexmark ICS account

The invoice capture is provided by an external online service, Lexmark Invoice Capture Service (ICS).

Thus, before you can use this functionality, you need to sign up for an account with Lexmark ICS.

Lexmark provides a freemium model, were a certain number of captures are for free, as well as a subscription model, with a pay per capture. No installation is required, and you can be up and running in 10 minutes. To extract lines as well, you need to have the subscription model.

Connect Dynamics 365 for Financials with your Lexmark ICS account

Once you have signed up with Lexmark ICS, you will receive an email from them with your account information, as well as further instructions for how to set up Financials.

In short, all you need to do, is to open the OCR Service Setup page in Financials and fill in the fields. For more information, see How to: Set Up Incoming Documents.

About incoming documents

In Financials, you can store incoming documents such as purchase invoices in the Incoming Documents list. This provides a convenient single point of storage, and ensures that documents are backed up together with your other business data. It also allows linking to created documents, such as purchase invoices, as well as ledger entries in Financials, which can then be shared with auditors at a later point.

Documents can be added to the list either by uploading them in the browser, or by capturing photos of the documents using a device camera, such as a tablet or smartphone. In the latter case, you can capture directly from the Financials app, as well as use a camera app such as Microsoft Office Lens and then upload the file in the Financials app.

Extract incoming documents using the Lexmark Invoice Capture service

You can send incoming documents to the Lexmark Invoice Capture service to extract data to create documents in Financials without having to retype content. You can also email your documents directly to the Lexmark Invoice Capture service, in which case corresponding incoming documents will be created automatically once the documents have been extracted in the invoice capture service and downloaded into Financials.

Once a document arrives in the Lexmark Invoice Capture Service, you can manually train and verify the extracted data online, and then release the extracted document to Financials.

Create documents in Dynamics 365 for Financials

When incoming documents have been extracted in the invoice capture service, the corresponding incoming document card with be updated with the extracted data, and you can now create journal lines or purchase invoices depending on the invoice type. The extracted data will be used to populate data such as vendor, dates, lines, amounts, and so on, automatically. If errors occur, such as the service cannot find a vendor or an item, these will be shown on the incoming document card, allowing you to correct them and retry.

Use workflows to automate process steps

You can use powerful workflow functionality in Financials to automate parts of the flow from incoming document to final posted purchase document, such as creating workflows to automate these scenarios:

• Approval of incoming documents before processing
• Sending new incoming documents to the OCR service
• Receiving extracted documents on a scheduled basis
• Creating purchase documents (invoice or general journal lines) based on an extracted incoming document
• Posting purchase documents, such as for specific vendors, below certain values, and so on
• Creating payment journal entries for invoices

For more information, see How to: Use OCR to Turn PDF and Image Files into Electronic Documents

If you haven’t already tried Dynamics 365 for Financials, then sign up for the free preview.