Automating Invoice Posting in Accounting Platforms with Dativery One-Click Integration
Typing over information from invoices is not a pain felt just by large enterprises and service centers. The same activity bogs down smaller companies, individuals and particularly accounting companies. The total volumes per user are smaller, which demands lower cost of deployment and integration. But at the same time, the usage environments are less varied and are defined by the accounting software in use. Ideally, invoice data capture would be a feature offered directly by the accounting software. As established vendors are overcoming business and technical momentum, space opens up for third-party solutions.
As Rossum is working towards the mission to create a world without data entry, it chose Dativery, an integration-as-a-service startup, as one of its early technical partners for this scenario. Dativery’s aim is to establish universal connectivity to a wide spectrum of API-enabled accounting softwares and Rossum’s data capture functionality provides a perfect added value to drive Dativery’s adoption.
Dativery’s service is composed of a series of system-specific connectors mapping all application functionality to a common data model. Dativery can therefore treat system connectors as interchangeable. This allows cross-system data imports or simple melding of accounting data with CRM or email reader.
Most relevantly, Dativery was able to leverage Rossum app by simply implementing its API once, and mapping it to the shared model. This way, all accounting systems supported by Dativery automatically receive the data capture functionality.
The User Journey
The user experience is described in a Dativery help page. It all begins with a few-click setup wizard that connects Dativery with the user account in the accounting software.
Dativery synchronizes its data model with the user account as configured, and sets up a Rossum user account for data capture purposes. From that moment, users can then upload invoices for data capture by forwarding them to a specific email address.
When users want to enter invoices into the general ledger, they log into the app to see all the queued invoices, and quickly process them within the verification interface. The verification interface enables users to verify the correctness of each field to be verified, quickly capture more fields by a single click, and process non-captured fields like GL coding and accounting details.
The user value proposition rests on the fact that the verification interface completely replaces the native invoice posting dialog of the accounting software – each invoice is seen only once, during the data capture process. After successful verification, users may immediately find invoices in their general ledger view in the accounting software.
Technical Implementation
Technically, Dativery uses the Document Management API for integration. Dativery uses an admin-level account (issued to partners on request) to administer its organization object that is bound to Dativery in the app. Each Dativery client has their own workspace, with the in-organization queue structure mirroring their accounting configuration. The Rossum sidebar schema, where data to capture is autogenerated by Dativery, is based on the accounting software configuration as well.
Dativery uses the admin account to issue user accounts to individuals with the Rossum app, who use the native Rossum interface to upload invoices and verify them. Dativery leverages the Rossum connector API to get notified about successfully verified invoices and then posts them to the accounting software asynchronously in the background.
Dativery’s integration is currently test-driven on users of the Flexibee accounting software in a public beta with sign-up open to all users. We plan to work with Dativery further to gradually roll out the functionality for other Central European accounting systems, as well as some high-demand global ERP suites such as Netsuite.