Yoga for FSM streamlines invoice processing by automating capture, OCR, validation, and Lawson v10 integration across both PO and non-PO invoices.
In the demo below, Senior Consultant Brian Ayers walks through how invoices can be ingested from scanners, email, file imports, or simple drag-and-drop capture. As documents arrive, Yoga instantly extracts key fields, routes invoices for AP review, and identifies those eligible for straight-through processing based on high-confidence matches. For exceptions, Yoga highlights line discrepancies, missing PO lines, or add-on cost variances and enables AP teams to collaborate directly with Supply Chain through built-in resolution queues, eliminating email back-and-forth.
For non-PO invoices, the system supports configurable approval workflows, live Lawson record creation with hold codes, and real-time status updates for approvers. Once fully approved, invoices post seamlessly to Lawson without batch jobs or delays.
By replacing manual entry, email chains, and multi-system navigation with Yoga’s real-time extraction and integrated validation flows, organizations accelerate throughput, reduce errors, and give AP teams full visibility into every step of the invoice lifecycle.
Click below to see the Yoga for FSM invoice process in action.
Transcript
Good morning. My name’s Brian Ayres. I’m a senior consultant here at RPI. We’re going to take a look at Yoga FSM invoices, specifically Yoga interfacing with Lawson version 10, today. This is going to be a very high-level overview. If you want more information or a personalized demo, please reach out and let us know.
Yoga can capture invoices from a scanner, from an email, and from a file import. It is also able to capture them directly in the application here, which we’re to take a look at today. So we’ll go ahead and add some invoices here.
I’ll just drag these over from my PC, and we’ll get these loaded. I want you to pay attention here as these come in, how quickly they actually OCR and show up, and are ready for validation. So I’m gonna hit add invoices. And once these invoices come in, they actually go right into our AP review view for our AP validators. Take a look at them. Go here and refresh. And this is pretty good.
In real-time, this is how quickly things will come in. The data has already been extracted from the invoices. Now they’re ready for validation. I’m going to take a look at our first one here that is flagged for straight-through eligible. What this means is that if the invoice, if we had had straight through processing turned on, this invoice was basically able to match perfectly, extracted all the values off the invoice at a high level of confidence, and it would actually gone right over to version 10. Nobody would have needed to touch it.
We’re still going to take a look at it, though, here and walk through what the invoice looks like. So we’re looking at our image here. We have our primary document, which will always be our invoice image. We have supporting documentation if you need to load any backup for an invoice, or if this comes in and gets captured via email, it’s going to have the email body on here as well. So you can always have the email body live with the invoice document.
We can see that we were able to extract a valid PO number. We got a valid remit to the location. All of our confidence around the invoice number and the invoice date, those are all pretty high, so we don’t need to stop and review any of those. And again, this one did extract everything kind of perfectly here. This is kind of our best-case scenario. We do actually write back payment data into Yoga as well. So once this invoice gets paid, we’ll be able to have that information back here also in Yoga.
I’m going to go ahead and just submit this invoice, and that’ll post over to version 10. We did have three POs and one non-PO that came in. So let’s take a look at these other PO invoices. Take a look at the process.
Now, our reason code at the top here, we do have a line total mismatch. So it’s telling us why this invoice stopped, why it didn’t go straight through. So if I look through here again, you kind of see, it’s like nothing at the top here I need to look at. Anything that’s in yellow, it’s going to tell me it’s basically a warning, letting me know what could be wrong. It’s telling me to double-check my add-on costs. Looks like we did have some freight add-on costs and tax on here, but Yoga did extract those accurately.
Down here, where I pair the lines against the purchase order, it looks like the top one here is green, so I was able to pair that. But then I have a message here that’s telling me that the second line didn’t pair because of a unit cost mismatch. So it did actually extract everything accurately. We’re good to go here. But if I click on View PO lines, it’s going to show me the PO lines that are available on the Invo in Lawson. And I can see the unit price here is $5.55.
It looks like we got an invoice for 600. So it didn’t perfectly match that line because the price difference is just having the validator review it. Make sure that, hey, we do want to actually match that line. This invoice is still going to post over to lesson version 10. If you’re using cost messaging, the cost message will get created when this invoice goes to match. But you can still process the invoice totally through Yoga. No issue.
All you need to do now is basically pair that second line. So I come up here and hit pair selected. That’s going to pair that line. And now my submit invoice at the top is lit up. I can actually submit this and post this over to Lawson.
So let’s submit the invoice here, and we’ll send this one over.
Okay, let’s take a look at our next PO, and then we’ll get into the non-PO’s, and we’ll show briefly what the invoice approval process looks like here in Yoga.
So I’ve opened this one up. I do see that it says missing add-on costs. So it thinks there could be an issue with my add-on costs. I do have a couple on here. Let’s look through. So we actually did extract the add-on costs correctly on this one as well. But I can see that it only extracted the first purchase order line, not the second one. So I want to go in and manually match that line. So when I click on view PO lines, this is showing me the available lines in Lawson again to match to.
But I actually don’t see that second PO line, I only see the first line here. This is an instance where I can’t fully process this invoice. I’m gonna actually send it over to our supply chain team for them to take a look at it and let them know that there’s a problem with it. In the past, a lot of our clients would just do this via email. So they just email the buyer or somebody on the supply chain team and let them know that we’re missing a line on the purchase order.
We can do that all within Yoga, though. So that gives us a lot more visibility into any issues, repeat issues with vendors, or how long it’s taking to resolve some of these issues. So it’s a big plus here in Yoga for us. I’m gonna actually clear out that reason code, so we’re not really missing an add-on cost. We’re actually missing a line. So I’m gonna select the missing line reason code here.
And when I do that, I’m not gonna be submitting the invoice over to Lawson, and I’m actually gonna be routing it to our purchasing invoice resolution queue, and that’s where the buyers will log in, and they’ll take a look at the invoices that are out there that need some assistance before they can be processed. So I’m just gonna say missing line two.
Confirm that. So that’s going to route over to the purchasing invoice resolution queue for them to take a look at it. Now, you may have noticed an invoice actually bounced back into our AP review queue here. And I see a status. It’s got an exclamation point. It just came back in. This is actually the one we processed previously. So if I mouse over that message here, it’s going to tell me that the purchase order is not released.
So our interface over to version 10 is pretty much a live interface. There’s maybe a one to two-minute delay between sending an invoice over and having the invoice created. We are not creating these records through MA540 or AP520. These are actually being interfaced using AX transactions, similar to the loss and add-ins protocols. So these are being created right into AP20 live. So we’ll get this response back.
I don’t have to wait for the end of the hour or the end of the day to find out that a PO is not released; we’ll find out right away. So just as like, just as if you were keying it right into Lawson. So what I would do on this one, if I open up the invoice, I can see my document notes here. This is going to show me basically the whole invoice history where this invoice has been, who’s touched it and any system comments that came back. So we have a Lawson export issue; the purchase order is not released.
So what I’m gonna do is actually clear my reason code here, and I’m going to be looking for these custom reason codes. We can actually change these if we need to. I’m going to actually put missing or invalid PO. We may in this instance, want to add one for POs not released, but we’ll say missing or invalid PO. And then again, I’m going to come up here, and I’m going to route this over to the purchasing invoice resolution.
Again, it’s going to require that comment, so I can’t send anything over to the supply chain team without a comment on it. So PO not released, and we’ll send that over to them. Once that PO gets released and they go in and release that in Lawson, they just route that back to this AP review queue. Then I can go ahead and process that invoice. So all that communication is done within Yoga here. There’s no emailing back and forth anymore. As I said, we do have some metrics that we could run to see how long it’s taking to have these issues resolved. And also, are we having more PO issues with specific vendors? We’re able to see that.
Ol, so let’s take a look at our non-PO here. So this invoice is one that we’re going to send out for approval. The form here does look very similar to what the PO form looks like, except we’re able to add some GL lines here. I don’t think I mentioned before, the viewer here, if you want to pop this image out, you can float the image and drag that over to a second monitor. So you have a little bit more real estate. You can look at the invoice on one screen, then you’ll have your form up here on the other screen.
So this invoice, I want to go through and just make sure that everything was extracted correctly. There are a few ways that we can do approvals within Yoga. We can define the number of levels that voices are going to go through for approval. Each level can have its own dollar threshold. The way that our demo system here is set up is based on how the invoice is coded, so the company accounting unit combination, that’s how we know where to route the invoice for approval. And the system will do that automatically for us.
So AP in this instance is coding the invoice. If your organization doesn’t have accounts payable coding the invoice, you can select basically that company accounting unit, at least just to get it out, routed out to that department, or you could set up a whole different department structure to pick which department it needs to be routed out to. So you have a lot of flexibility within the application to do that. So I’m gonna see the company here 702.
I’m gonna go ahead and add a line here, GL line. This is all this invoice really needs is for me to put the coding on it. And again, if your organization doesn’t have AP code, the invoices, then you just pick the department where it needs to go for approval. You can see this is going out to the purchasing department.
So I’ll go ahead and put this purchase on there. And it looks like we ordered some staplers. So we’ll put in our office supplies. And then you can actually key in the percentage here. So if I want it to be 100 % coded to this line, I can add multiple distribution lines here if I want to and break out the percentages, or I can just type in the amount here.
So this invoice is all set. I can actually submit this out for approval. So I’m gonna submit this invoice now, and we’ll send that invoice out for approval. What I’m gonna do now is I’m gonna change hats. I’m gonna get logged in here as an invoice approver so we can take a look at what that looks like for an invoice approver when they’re going out to approve the invoices. Having this test system set up is because we want to do all of our accrual reporting out of Lawson if possible.
So when we submit a non-PO invoice for approval, it’s actually gonna go out and create a header in Lawson, and we’ll put a hold code on that invoice so it doesn’t get processed while it’s pending approval. The approver can go in, the approver can change the coding, they can reject the invoice, or they can approve it. And then once the invoice is fully approved, that hold code will get released from the invoice in Lawson, and then it can get paid. So it’s pretty straightforward the way that process works. And then while we’re waiting for that invoice to come out here for approval,
Actually, it already showed up here. So I’m to pull this over. I’m logging in to the application now as an invoice approver. So my views are going to look a little different. All I have access to is the invoice approver. I’m seeing invoices awaiting my approval, invoices that have already approved by me, and then invoices paid or awaiting payment. So if I want, as an approver, if I want to see invoices that I’ve personally approved, I can do that.
I want to see invoices that have been paid. They’re waiting for a payment and will go in. So if I have a vendor that calls me as an approver and wants to know the status, I’m able to kind of let them know without redirecting that to the accounts payable department. So as an invoice approver, I’m going to click on this to open it up.
I can see that there are different approval levels here. So I have an approver at level one, two, and three; nobody’s at level four. We have an approver here at level five as well. So I can see the path that this invoice is gonna take. We can set up escalations so that after five business days, three business days, it’s gonna escalate up the levels here. And again, each of these levels can have its own dollar threshold for approving approvals.
My options at the top here are also going to be a little different than what the AP user saw. I can just approve or reject an invoice. If I do reject an invoice, I am similar to what we saw when we were sending things to the supply chain team. We’re required to put a comment on there to ⁓ let AP know why we’re rejecting that invoice. So, as an approver, when I come in here, really the only thing that I can change on the invoice is the GL coding. So if I realize, like, this isn’t Office Supplies, I need to change it, I can change that GL coding, but I can’t change anything else.
If the vendor’s wrong or the remit two is wrong, we would just route that invoice back to AP for them to process it. As an invoice approver, this looks good. I’m gonna go ahead and approve this invoice, and now I have nothing left to approve. As an invoice approver, I do get notifications every day. We don’t have it set up so that every invoice sends out a notification. We send out a summary. Every morning, first thing in the morning, every approver with something that needs to get approved will have an invoice or email sent out to them so they can see what is out there for them to approve. And then they can, or they can just log in directly to approve those invoices.
I do want to take a minute to hop over to Lawson. Let’s take a look at what these invoices look like in the Lawson application. So I’m going to look up one of those PO invoices that I processed here first, which was the first one that would have gone straight through that process. We have our invoice that was created here.
This invoice, because it was a purchase order, didn’t get put on hold. This invoice is really just waiting for the automatch job to run to release it and try to match it. I do want to drill in on the invoice here and show you one thing as well. When we load these invoices in, we do add a related images link. This can either link back to the application, users can go in and just click on that link from Lawson, if they can see the invoice in Lawson, they can go back in and see that invoice in Yoga. So it’ll follow the image.
If your images are being stored out in SharePoint or some long-term storage as well, we can link out to that other application also to grab the images or have that link there. We can really build whatever links we need to here to link back to that image. So it’ll always tie back.
So that’s kind of our quick overview here of the Yoga FSM for Invoices solution linked up to version 10. If you have any questions, please reach out and let us know. If you want to see a more in-depth demo, we can definitely do that too. Or if you want to try to hook this up to your environment and kind of see what some of your invoices look like, we can also do that. Just reach out and let us know. Thanks, have a great day.
