AP Automation FAQs

Intacct accepts documents that are:

• PDF, JPG, JPEG, TIFF, HEIC, or PNG files
• Unencrypted
• Up to 20 MB in size
• Fewer than 200 pages in length

There will be no change in approval functionality with AP Automation. Transactions are created in draft by the AP automation function regardless of whether you use approvals or not. If you use AP bill approvals, the bill will be reviewed for accuracy by the person responsible (for example, your AP clerk) and then submitted for approval in the same manner as it would before using AP Automation.

AP Automation supports detection for the following currencies:

• USD

• GBP

• CAD

• AUD

• EUR

• ZAR

If the system cannot detect the transaction currency, it defaults to the base currency for the entity or location selected during upload.

AP Automation is only available to customers in production environments. It cannot be tested in sandbox environments.

Machine learning models are designed to learn and improve from real-world data to ensure accuracy and reliability. This is why training happens exclusively in the production environment.

Documents uploaded in sandbox environments are often test data, simulated scenarios, or incomplete records, which may not represent the actual variations and complexities of real-world vendor documents. If the model were to train on this data, it would compromise its accuracy and reliability. Allowing sandbox data into the training pipeline risks introducing noise or inaccuracies, as we cannot verify that sandbox documents represent authentic or meaningful data.

For AP Automation functionality to improve over time and work as expected, we require companies to use the production environment.

For draft bills that Intacct creates for you, Smart Rules and Smart Events do not run until you submit or post the bill.

Because credit card transactions are handled in Cash Management, credit card statements cannot be processed using AP Automation.

Learn more about credit card transactions.

Attachments are stored with your other Intacct attachments, in the following folders:

• STXUPLOADGROUP_EMAIL: Bills forwarded by email

• STXUPLOADGROUP_apbill: Bills that you upload

To view a list of all attachments, go to Company > Setup > Storage > Attachments.

When a vendor provides you with a bill plus supporting documentation, such as receipts, be sure to email or upload only the bill. This is important because AP Automation creates a draft bill for each file you upload or email, whether it is a bill or documentation.

After Intacct creates the draft bill, you can add supporting files to the bill as attachments.

By default, when you upload a document to the Bills list, it always creates a bill that is outside the Purchasing workflow.

If your Purchasing application has automated transactions turned on, you can upload vendor documents to the Automated transactions list. This creates a draft vendor invoice that Sage Intacct automatically matches to the source purchasing transaction. Learn more about AP Automation with Purchasing.

AP Automation supports processing bills in the languages used in supported regions.

Contact your account manager or Channel Executive to discuss pricing.

Contact your Sage Intacct account manager or Channel Executive to learn about enabling AP Automation.

Your unique automation email address will be generated for you, one email address per entity. This is an inbox to convert documents to automated transactions only. You will not have access to the email inboxes.

Many customers prefer to only forward emails they have vetted from an inbox that they have control over. For example, vendors send their invoices to your email address accountspayable@company.com, and your AP clerks forward vetted emails to the automation inbox for processing.

Anyone can email a bill to a Sage-provisioned email address.

For bill uploads, submitting and posting bills, and bill approvals, AP Automation uses existing permissions.

You can contact your Sage Intacct account manager to request deactivation of AP Automation.

Learn how individual fields are populated in a draft bill.

You can set whether you want Intacct to create bills that show each line item listed on the bill document or a single line item with the total.

To define how you want Intacct to create line items:

• Bill uploads: Make your selection each time you upload a batch of bills.
• Emailed bills: Configure the setting to apply to all emailed bills.

  Learn how to change the setting in Configure how much detail to include in emailed bills. The default value is a single line that summarizes the total.

AI-driven GL account coding and location, department, and project dimensions are available for everyone. For all other fields, you can manually add this information to the draft bill before you post it.

For companies that use the Tax application, automated transactions will capture header-level tax information based on the predicted location for the transaction.

Verify the tax solution and enter tax details for each line to complete the automated transaction before you post it.

Learn more about reviewing and posting incoming bills.

No, the bill is analyzed, processed, and created in Draft mode. This requires you to review the transaction before posting it.

AI/ML does not predict Account labels. When you review a bill before posting, you can select the Account label for each entries.

Shipping and freight charges are not captured by the automation when it's a subtotal item in the original document. Add an entry line to the automated transaction to capture shipping costs associated with the transaction.

Learn more about reviewing and posting incoming bills.

It should not interfere with AI processing if the document is legible.

The due date defaults to the vendor terms.

The system will not create a new vendor if it doesn't already exist. It will create the bill with a noted exception for you to create the vendor before you post the bill.

AP Automation does not currently populate allocations. You can still upload bills with automation and then add the allocations for each line.

The AI continuously learns and improves from corrections within your company.

You can upload up to 30 bills at once. To upload more, select Upload again, drag and drop more files, and select Create bills.

For each file you upload, Intacct creates a single draft bill. If you have multiple bill documents, upload the documents in separate files. You can upload multiple files as a batch.

The time to generate the draft bill should be relatively quick, but it also depends on the size and complexity of the attachment..

Users with entity restrictions can upload bills at the entity level, within the entities they have access to.

Users with departmental restrictions and no entity restrictions can upload bills at the top level or the entity level. If the previous bill from the vendor included a line item assigned to a restricted department, the department field for the corresponding line item in the new draft bill is empty.

You can view the list of your provisioned email addresses in Configure Accounts Payable. You need admin privileges to view this page.

AP Automation email addresses use the following format.

New customers and companies who have opted in for smart email capabilities will see the following format:

Existing customers who have not opted in for smart email capabilities will see the following format:

When determining your email address, do not include spaces or underscores, even if they are present in your company ID.

If your provisioned email addresses end with ai.sage.com, then auto-forwarding rules are supported.

If your email addresses end with sagemail.com, auto-forward is not supported. You can manually forward emails from your AP mailbox to the AP Automation mailbox.

Yes, you can forward a batch of bills attached to one email. Intacct creates a draft bill for each attachment.

Be aware of the following limitations when forwarding a single email that contains multiple bill attachments.

• Each bill must be a separate file.

• The file name for each bill must be unique with the batch of bills.

• The email can have a maximum of 200 attachments.

• The size of email message and all attachments combined must be less than 40 MB.

If an email has multiple attachments and one or more fail, it's difficult to determine which attachments failed to generate a draft bill. If this occurs, consider sending one attachment per email going forward. This practice will help with troubleshooting missing transactions.

Email addresses are not editable.

If an email was rejected or failed, it is not stored.

If it is the first bill you received from the vendor, Intacct uses the default location for the entity. Typically, the first location is the same as the entity name. As you correct and post automated transactions, the AI/ML learns and improves the accuracy for future transactions.

Intacct creates a bill for each attachment sent by the vendor. To avoid bills that duplicate charges, delete drafts created from receipts. Keep the draft created from the bill document.

We recommend forwarding bill documents to the provisioned email address yourself. This allows you to control which documents get generated as automated transactions and avoid superfluous drafts for supporting attachments.

When the system encounters an error with an emailed bill, it sends an error message to the sender. For example, if no attachment was found or the attachment was not one of the accepted file types, the reply includes this information.

If you're missing draft transactions but did not receive a bounce back email notifying you of an error, log a support case.

When Intacct encounters an issue with an uploaded or emailed bill, it flags it as an import exception. The Import exceptions column in the Bills list shows these exceptions.

• Resolve: You need to take action to complete the bill. For example, if Intacct cannot match the vendor with enough confidence, you need to select the correct vendor. If a problem with the bill document prevents data extraction, you need to edit the bill details or resubmit the bill.
• Duplicate: Intacct detected that this bill is already in the system. To avoid double billing, the system alerts you to the duplicate.

To get details about an exception, hover over the exception in the Import exceptions column. Or, you can view or edit the bill to see details.

For drafts flagged as duplicates, you can view the original bill when you view or edit the duplicate, as long as you did not delete the original. Incoming bills are compared to bills that you previously submitted using AP Automation.

After you edit a bill and either save it as a draft, submit it, or post it, Intacct removes the exception flag.

You can view import exceptions in several ways, using the Bills list:

• Filter the Import exceptions column for an exception by name. For example, filter by Resolve.

• Sort the Import exceptions column in ascending order, which brings the exceptions to the top.

• Create a custom view.