When a trading partner sends invoices electronically to a Buyer, those invoices will be validated against the SAP Business Network transaction rules that you have configured for invoicing. You will recall from the Digital Order Management unit that the transaction rules act as a filter in the process of receiving the trading partner’s documents.
In addition to the transaction rules acting as a filter, the invoicing fields and validations available on the trading partner’s account user interface are controlled by the invoice rules that you have configured. In this image, you can see how checking the rule "Require suppliers to provide order information" causes an error message for the trading partner if they do not fill out this field when creating their invoice.
Trading partners that have integrated their ERP to the SAP Business Network via cXML or EDI are still subject to invoicing rules. Invoices that don't fulfill the specific criteria set by the invoice rules will be rejected.
After the invoices are validated and signed, they are downloaded to your invoicing system for review and approval. If you find a discrepancy (e.g. between the expected and actual tax amount or a line item invoice to purchase order mismatch) you can then dispute or reject the Invoice and require the trading partner to resubmit a corrected invoice.
Note
Some of the invoice rules are visible only if certain functionality has been enabled for your SAP Business Network Buyer Account. In case additional invoicing rules are required, consult the SAP Ariba solution documentation to review if any additional parameters would need to be activated.
If you recall from Unit 1, invoice rules should be set at the default level and can also be configured at both the country-based invoice and supplier group level for global programs or if specific business scenarios/requirements apply to only a subset of your trading partners. Keep in mind that not all rules will be displayed at the country-based invoice or supplier group level, so you must always review and configure these settings at the default level first.
If you would like to review the Unit 1 video How Transaction Rules Function, please click this link.
To view how invoice rules are applied, you can click on "View Invoice Rule Results" to determine how the levels of rules and types of rules function when activated.
In this example, you can see that the supplier group No Invoice Attachment Required has been chosen from the dropdown, and the country selected is Australia. The first column shows if the rule has been applied or not. The columns to the right show the settings at the default transaction rules, supplier group rules, and country-based invoice rules level. If a selection is blank, this indicates that the rule is not available to be set at that level.
The rule results tool is a great way to quickly check to ensure all invoice rules are set up as you expect them to be and troubleshoot when a rule is not behaving as expected.