Last month, we hosted an invoicing webinar for our suppliers on Ariba Network to share best practices and address common invoicing questions. We were excited about the level of interaction throughout the event and the questions we received.
We’re answering all your questions in the form of a blog series organized by common themes. The first post for this series is on General Account Management related to invoicing.
To watch the webinar on demand, register first before accessing it here. To review the general invoicing process, check out this video.
General Account Management
Q1: Can SAP Ariba help me automatically direct incoming POs to specific contacts responsible for different regions or customers? Right now, I receive all the POs and have to manually determine who to send the POs to.
- Yes, you can customize PO routing based on the individual buyer. The POs will remain visible in your account, but the email will be routed directly to the email addresses you add. To do this:
- Go to “Settings” and select “Customer Relationships”
- Click on the “Actions” button and select “Override Routing” in the dropdown menu.
Q2: If my company is a wholly owned subsidiary of a corporation that already has an existing account on Ariba Network, can we use the same account even if our company name and banking information are different from the parent corporation?
- As a subsidiary with a different company name and banking details, it would be best to separate transactions from your parent corporation.
- SAP Ariba allows you to establish a parent-child account hierarchy to help manage multiple accounts or subsidiaries. Once you set up the subsidiary’s account, the administrator of the parent account can then link your ANID to register your subsidiary as a child account. This would allow the parent account administrator to handle service subscriptions on your behalf and give them permission to sign on to your child account to manage transactions.
- For more information about linking accounts, check out this article on account hierarchy.
Q3: If we have multiple subsidiaries under one ANID, how do we make sure our subsidiary names come up correctly for each invoice?
- You could choose to edit the invoice header with additional details or add a comment to the invoice and indicate which subsidiary is involved in the transaction.
Q4: How can I set up users with the ability to generate invoices?
- Users in roles with the appropriate permissions are able to generate invoices. If you are the account administrator, follow these steps:
- Go to “Settings” and click on “Users”
- From the “Manage Users” tab, you can edit the users and assign them specific roles that have permission to create invoices
- Watch this video to learn more about managing your users and roles.
Enterprise Account
Q5: How many invoices can I send based on the different pricing tiers for an enterprise account on Ariba Network?
- There are 5 subscription levels based on your annual transaction volume: premium, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. Suppliers who are transacting less than USD $250,000 annually will be assigned a bronze subscription level regardless of document counts.You can find more details about subscription levels in the “Ariba Network Enterprise Accounts: Supplier Fee Schedule” datasheet or on our Accounts and Pricing webpage.
Standard Account
Q6: Can standard account users see invoices directly on the portal including invoice submission dates and invoice status?
- Yes, you can access your invoices by clicking on the “Invoices” tile in your overview bar or clicking on the “Invoices” menu item in your navigation bar.
Q7: Can standard account users see customer rules?
- You can view the different rules for each of your customers by going to your “Customer Relationships” page and pulling up the customer’s profile, which will include their invoice rules. Watch this video if you need help navigating.
Q8: Can standard account users see a list of all the POs that have been billed?
- Go to your workbench and click on the “Orders” tile. This will show you a list of your orders and you can filter the list by clicking on “edit filter”. In the resulting table, you will see a column labelled as “Amount Invoiced”. Comparing the “Amount Invoiced” column to the “Amount” column, you can identify whether the particular order has been partially or fully invoiced.
Q9: Can standard account users email pdf invoices to buyers?
- You can download a copy of your invoice from Ariba Network to email your customer.
- If your customer accepts invoices on Ariba Network and has invited you to send electronic invoices, you could deliver invoices directly to them via Ariba Network.
- To learn more about electronic invoicing, check out this webpage.
If you’d like to explore other invoicing questions, check out the rest of this blog series:
