Products such as receipt bank are increasingly used to automate the creation of purchase invoices and expenses in accounts software. These invoices can be imported into Synergist if your accounts package supports this. Currently Xero, Sage Business Cloud Accounting and QuickBooks Online Edition can be used in this way.
In the export to accounts > purchases screen there are options to "Import from..." and "Import from file" immediately below the list of purchase invoice batches:
On initial setup clicking "Import from...." will populate the list with invoices from the past 90 days. Most, if not all of these will either be in Synergist already (if you are an existing Synergist user activating this feature for the first time), or not be required in Synergist if you are a new Synergist user. Any invoices that you do not wish to import should be selected by ticking the box next to them, and choosing "Ignore" from the actions options. These items will not appear again in this interface.
If the supplier on an item exists in Synergist the purchase / expense column will indicate the type of supplier in Synergist. Unknown suppliers (in Synergist) are shown in red, they will need to be created in Synergist before an invoice can be imported. Once created use the "Set supplier" option in the actions for selected line items:
Clicking on an item displays more information depending on the nature of the item:
Purchases display items from the invoice allowing you to pick the phase or purchase order that each item relates to. Selecting the phase will allow you to pick a purchase order from that phase for the supplier in question. If you do not select a phase you can still pick a purchase order from a list of all open POs for the supplier in question. There is also an option to create a new PO at this point. If you choose to create a new purchase order you must set the supply type in the dropdown that will appear once you have selected "Create PO".
Expense also display items from the invoice and again it is required that you pick the phase in Synergist that each item relates to. However, it is not necessary that a purchase order for each item exists already in Synergist, instead the expense type for each item is chosen from the drop-down. An expense order in Synergist will be automatically created using this type:
Once all your purchases and expenses have been linked to phases and purchase orders / expense types, tick the boxes next to each invoice in the list and select Process selected from the actions menu.
If an invoice has come through from Xero with a single line and you need to split this to more than one purchase order in Synergist, you can do so by clicking the ticks icon:
This creates a new blank line - just fill in the net and tax amounts required and click split - the original line will be adjusted so that the total invoice amounts are retained. Each line can now be allocated to a separate purchase order.
It is also possible to match an invoice against part of a purchase order, leaving the order open in Synergist so that another invoice can be matched against the balance - note the "Final?" control next to the split icon. Leave this greyed out to leave the purchase order open in Synergist. To final invoice and close the purchase order click this control:
The Set supplier option on the actions menu allows you to choose on an ad-hoc basis the supplier to use for any invoice to be processed. Ideally this would never be required if the supplier data in both Synergist and your accounts system is kept in synch, but if a new supplier has been created in error in your accounts system by Receipt Bank or whatever then you can associate an invoice with an existing supplier in Synergist.
You can choose to "Mark as purchase / expense" entries in the list as appropriate. This allows you to proceed with an unknown supplier down the correct purchase / expense route in Synergist, just select the line item(s) as normal and click the appropriate action button below the list.
You can filter which invoices are pulled through from Xero based on their status - draft, awaiting approval and awaiting payment. These are set in company settings > accounts details tab:
You can also set the default for part or final allocations here. If you mainly have one purchase order for each purchase invoice leave this unchecked to default to final allocation.
Note that you should use care when changing the statuses to import after you have started to use this feature. Once an invoice has been ignored due to its status in Xero it will not be imported even if you change the status setting in Synergist to include the status of an ignored invoice. The status of the invoice will have to be changed in Xero in order to reset its timestamp and make it available for import.
Leaving the status box empty is the same as selecting all statuses, this is the default.