How to: Receive and Convert Electronic Documents

The generic version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV supports receiving electronic invoices and credit memos in the PEPPOL format, which is supported by the largest providers of document exchange services. To receive an invoice from a vendor as an electronic PEPPOL document, you process the document in the Incoming Documents window to convert it to a purchase invoice or general journal line in Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

In addition to receiving electronic documents directly from trading partners, you can receive electronic documents from an OCR service that has turned your PDF or image files into electronic documents. For more information, see How to: Use OCR to Turn PDF and Image Files into Electronic Documents.

Before you can receive electronic documents through the document exchange service, you must set up various master data, such as company information, vendors, items, and units of measure. These are used to identify the business partners and items when converting data in elements in the incoming document file to fields in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The import and data conversion of PEPPOL invoices are performed by the Data Exchange Framework, represented by the PEPPOL - Invoice data exchange definition. For more information, see How to: Set Up Electronic Document Sending and Receiving. In addition, you must set up and enable the preconfigured service connection. For more information, see How to: Set Up a Document Exchange Service.

Before you can receive electronic documents through the OCR service, you must set up and enable the preconfigured service connection. For more information, see How to: Set Up an OCR Service.

The traffic of electronic documents in and out of Microsoft Dynamics NAV is managed by the Job Queue feature. Before you can receive electronic documents, the relevant job queue must be started. For more information, see How to: Set Up Job Queues.

You can either start the conversion of electronic documents manually, as described in this procedure, or you can enable a workflow to convert electronic documents automatically when they are received. The generic version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV includes a workflow template, From Incoming Electronic through OCR to Open Purchase Invoice Workflow, which is ready to be copied to a workflow and enabled. For more information, see Workflow.

Note

When you convert electronic documents received from the OCR service to documents or journal lines in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, multiple lines on the source document will be summed on one line. The single line will be of type G/L Account and the Description and (G/L account) No. fields will be empty. The value in the Amount field will equal the total amount excluding VAT of all lines in the source document. To make sure that the Description and No. fields are filled, you can choose the Map Text to Account button in the Incoming Documents window to define that a certain invoice text is always mapped to a certain debit or credit account in the general ledger. Going forward, the Description field on document or journal lines created from an electronic document for that vendor or customer will be filled with the text in question and the (G/L account) No. field with the account in question. Instead of mapping to a G/L account, you can also map to a bank account. This is practical, for example, for electronic documents for expenses that are already paid where you want to create a general journal line that is ready to post to a bank account. For more information and examples, see Text-to-Account Mapping.

The following procedure describes how to receive a vendor invoice and convert it to a purchase invoice in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The procedure is the same when you convert a vendor invoice to a general journal line.

To receive and convert an electronic invoice to a purchase invoice

  1. In the Search box, enter Incoming Documents, and then choose the related link.

  2. Select the line for the incoming document record that represents a new incoming electronic invoice, and then, on the Home tab, in the Manage group, choose Edit.

    In the Incoming Document window, the related XML file is attached, and most of the fields are prefilled with information from the electronic invoice. For more information, see How to: Create Incoming Document Records.

  3. In the Data Exchange Type field, choose PEPPOL - Invoice or OCR – Invoice depending on the source of the electronic document.

  4. To map text on the vendor invoice to a specific debit account, on the Actions tab, in the General group, choose Map Text to Account, and then fill the Text-to-Account Mapping window. For more information, see Text-to-Account Mapping.

  5. On the Actions tab, in the General group, choose Create Document.

    A purchase invoice will be created in Microsoft Dynamics NAV based on the information in the electronic document.

    Any validation errors, typically related to wrong or missing master data in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, will be shown on the Error Messages FastTab. For more information, see How to: Handle Errors When Receiving Electronic Documents.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Set Up Electronic Document Sending and Receiving
How to: Handle Errors When Receiving Electronic Documents
How to: Send Electronic Documents
How to: Set Up Data Exchange Definitions

Concepts

Incoming Documents
Data Exchange
Business Functionality

Other Resources

Incoming Document
Text-to-Account Mapping
OCR Status
Status