Accounts Payable / Accounts Receivable Reconciliation and Invoice System

Abstract

This solution resolves the discrepancy between invoices and payments that arises when the ordering party makes payments without verifying the contractor's invoice information before payment. [Solution] A means 3 is provided to reconcile accounts payable and accounts receivable between the ordering party's accounts payable list data 1 and the receiving party's accounts receivable list data 2. Information items that are not included in the ordering party's accounts payable list data 1 but are included in the receiving party's accounts receivable list data 2 are extracted and sent to the ordering party as an invoice document 6. The ordering party reviews the received invoice information and replies to the receiving party as purchase details information, responding with "approved" for items that are acceptable and "not approved" for items that cannot be approved. The receiving party reviews the contents of the purchase details information received as a reply from the ordering party and replies with whether or not it can be approved as purchase details reply information, thereby resolving the discrepancy between accounts payable and accounts receivable before the ordering party makes payment.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] The present invention targets the field related to the reconciliation process of accounts receivable and accounts payable in business-to-business transactions.

Background Art

[0002] In business-to-business transactions in Japan, it is common to settle on a monthly basis. The order receiver delivers an invoice based on its accounts receivable ledger to the order placer, and the order placer makes payments based on its accounts payable ledger while referring to the invoice.

[0003] In this settlement procedure, discrepancies between invoicing and payment frequently occur, and a large amount of manpower is spent on reconciliation. Therefore, as a countermeasure, a settlement procedure has been introduced in some business-to-business transactions where the order placer delivers a list of accounts payable to the order receiver before payment, and the order receiver confirms it before the order placer makes the payment.

[0004] However, even in this procedure, since various business-to-business settlement documents are exchanged, the problem of requiring manpower for reconciliation is not solved. Therefore, a mechanism for standardizing the data items of the exchanged documents as a common reference data model and automatically reconciling them with a system has finally reached the stage of practical application.

[0005] The accounts payable and accounts receivable reconciliation invoicing system of the present invention takes a procedure of inputting the accounts payable list data 1 sent by the order placer to the order receiver and the accounts receivable list data 2 of the order receiver into the accounts payable and accounts receivable reconciliation means 3 and performing reconciliation between the two.

[0006] In the prior art so far, it is possible to match the accounts payable list and the accounts receivable list, but the settlement process of transferred assets and services that are not included in the accounts payable list but are included in the accounts receivable list remains.

[0007] In the procedure for matching the accounts payable list and the accounts receivable list shown in the non-patent literature, for the settlement process of transferred assets that are not included in the accounts payable list but are included in the accounts receivable list, it is stipulated that the order receiver creates an invoice document and delivers it to the order placer manually separately from the accounts payable and accounts receivable reconciliation mechanism. Therefore, the effect of automation utilizing invoice digitization cannot be obtained.

Prior Art Documents

[0008] [Patent Document 1] Patent No. 7556722 [Non-patent literature]

[0009] [Non-Patent Document 1] Guidelines for Standard EDI Invoice Specifications for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Part 1 ver.4.3 [Overview of the Initiative] [Problems that the invention aims to solve]

[0010] The objective of this invention is to solve the problem of having to manually process cases where some details included in the accounts receivable list of the receiving party are not included in the accounts payable list of the ordering party.

[0011] When a client receives an invoice, they will make payment if the contents are reasonable, but they will not pay for items that they deem inappropriate. If the contractor is not checked in advance, the problem of discrepancies between invoices and payments will recur. To solve this problem, this invention allows the client to provide the contractor with purchase details information under the invoice system as a response to the invoice information. [Means for solving the problem]

[0012] In this invention, the accounts payable list data 1 of the ordering party and the accounts receivable list data 2 of the receiving party are input into the accounts payable / accounts receivable matching means 3, and the two sets of data are compared and verified. If the matching results match, the accounts payable / accounts receivable matching means 3 outputs a "confirmation" response document 4 and sends it to the ordering party. If there are items that do not match, a "confirmation not possible" response document 5 is output and sent to the ordering party. The most important feature of this invention is that if there are information items that exist in the receiving party's accounts receivable list data 2 but are not included in the ordering party's accounts payable list data 1, the matching means 3 extracts the information items not included in the ordering party's accounts payable list data 1 from the receiving party's accounts receivable list data 2, outputs an invoice document 6, and sends it to the ordering party.

[0013] By adding the requirements for the invoice details stipulated by the invoice system to the accounts payable list data 1, the accounts payable / accounts receivable matching means 3 can output the "confirmation" response document 4 with the requirements for the supplier to "confirm" the purchase details of the ordering party stipulated by the invoice system. Similarly, the "confirmation not possible" response document 5 can be output with the requirements for the supplier to "confirmation not possible" the purchase details of the ordering party stipulated by the invoice system.

[0014] By adding the requirements for qualified invoices stipulated by the invoice system to the accounts receivable list data, the accounts payable / accounts receivable matching means 3 can output the invoice document 6 with the additional data added to it, along with the requirements for qualified invoices stipulated by the invoice system.

[0015] Upon receiving the aforementioned invoice document 6, the ordering party will refer to its contents and "approve" any additional information items in invoice document 6, sending the response to the supplier as purchase details under the invoice system. For information items that should not be added, the ordering party will send a "not approved" response to the supplier as purchase details.

[0016] The contractor reviews the contents of the purchase details information provided by the ordering party. If they agree, they send a "confirmed" response document to the ordering party as the purchase details response information under the invoice system. If they do not agree, they send a "confirmation not possible" response document as the purchase details response information.

[0017] If the response document from the order recipient is "unconfirmable", human or digital negotiations are conducted among the parties until the "unconfirmable" item can be "confirmed", and the negotiations continue until the response document from the order recipient becomes "confirmed". The order placer makes payment when the purchase details response information received from the order recipient is a "confirmed" response document.

Advantages of the Invention

[0018] The present invention matches the order placer's accounts receivable list data 1 and the order recipient's accounts payable list data 2 before the order placer makes payment, extracts information items that are not included in the order placer's accounts receivable list data 1 but are included in the order recipient's accounts payable list data 2, transmits them to the order placer as a claim document 6, and the order placer examines the content of the claim document and transmits a response to the order recipient as the purchase details information of the invoice system. The order recipient confirms the content of the purchase details information delivered in response by the order placer and replies to the order placer with "confirmed" or "unconfirmable" of the content as the purchase details response information. The order placer makes payment based on the "confirmed" purchase details response information. By this procedure, the advantage of solving the problem of the mismatch between claims and payments caused by the order placer making payment without confirming the order recipient's claim information is obtained.

Brief Description of the Drawings

[0019] [Figure 1] Data Flow Diagram of the Accounts Receivable / Payable Matching and Claim System [Figure 2] Example of the Accounts Receivable / Payable Matching and Claim System

Modes for Carrying Out the Invention

[0020] The accounts receivable / payable matching means 3 of the accounts receivable / payable matching and claim system operates at the order recipient's end. Since the matching result is transmitted to the order placer via EDI, the form implemented in the order recipient's EDI provider 9 is easy to use. Figure 1 shows the data flow diagram of the accounts receivable / payable reference system. Figure 2 shows an example.

Example

[0021] Figure 1 shows the data flow of the accounts receivable / accounts payable reconciliation billing system. The key point of the present invention is the accounts receivable / accounts payable reconciliation means 3, and its implementation can be either on the cloud or on-premises, etc., without any restrictions.

[0022] Figure 2 illustrates the implementation of the accounts receivable / accounts payable reconciliation billing system to an EDI provider. The order placer and the order receiver each use an EDI provider to exchange EDI documents. The order placer-side EDI provider 7 provides the order placer's my page 8 as a UI on the cloud. On the screen of the order placer's my page 8, functions such as the function to send EDI documents and the function to display and confirm the content of the EDI documents received from the order receiver are provided.

[0023] The order receiver-side EDI provider 9 provides the order receiver's my page 10 as a UI on the cloud. Furthermore, it receives the order placer's accounts receivable list data 1, uploads the order receiver's accounts payable list data 2, inputs them into the accounts receivable / accounts payable reconciliation means 3 for matching, and provides the function to output the matching result. The output of the matching result is displayed on the order receiver's my page 10, and the order receiver checks the matching result and, if there is no problem, sends a reply to the order placer.

[0024] In Figure 2, a case where the order placer and the order receiver each use a different EDI provider is illustrated, but a single EDI provider can also provide the UI service functions on both sides of the order placer's my page 8 and the order receiver's my page 10.

Industrial Applicability

[0025] Regarding the long-standing unresolved problem of discrepancies between billing and payment, the present invention is applicable to all inter-company transactions and can eliminate the inefficiencies in the settlement operations in our country.

Explanation of Signs

[0026] 1 Accounts receivable list data 2 Accounts payable list data 3 Accounts receivable / accounts payable reconciliation means 4. Confirmation and response document 5. Unconfirmable response document 6. Billing Document 7. EDI provider on the ordering side 8. Client's My Page 9. Contractor-side EDI provider 10. Recipient's My Page

Claims

1. The system includes an accounts payable / accounts receivable matching means 3 that matches accounts payable list data 1 provided by the ordering party with accounts receivable list data 2 from the receiving party. The accounts payable / accounts receivable matching means 3 has a first function of matching accounts payable list data 1 and accounts receivable list data 2, and a second function of identifying the matching result and creating a response document from the orderer to the orderer, Accounts payable / accounts receivable matching and billing system, characterized by having a third function that, if there are line items in the accounts receivable list data 2 that are present in the accounts payable list data 1 but not in the accounts payable list data 1, extracts the missing line items from the accounts receivable list data 2, creates an "invoice" document 6, and sends it to the ordering party.

2. A means for the ordering party to receive and confirm the "request" document 6 described in claim 1, Accounts payable and accounts receivable matching and billing system characterized by having a means for the ordering party, after confirming the billing details, to create a response regarding the confirmation as a purchase details document stipulated by the invoice system and send it to the receiving party.

3. A means by which the contractor verifies the contents of the purchase details document provided by the ordering party as described in claim 2, Accounts payable and accounts receivable matching and invoicing system characterized by having a means for the receiving party to send a "confirmation" reply in the purchase details response document stipulated by the invoice system if they determine that the contents of the purchase details document provided by the ordering party are acceptable, and to send a "confirmation not possible" reply in the purchase details response document if they determine that there are items that cannot be accepted.

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