Know How at Noon: How to streamline supplier statement reconciliation in Esker

Joanne Marie Ignacio De Lasan   0:12
Hi everyone and welcome to Know How at Noon. I’m Joanne and the Customer Success Manager here at Fujifilm Business Innovation New Zealand. And if this is your first time joining us, welcome. And if you’ve joined us before, thank you for your continued support and participation. So just for everyone’s knowledge, Know How at Noon is our monthly webinar series where
FBNZ Process Automation Customer Success Team shares tips and best practices and useful features to help you get most of you out of your escrow, and today we’re talking about supplier state.
spot missing and unmatched invoices, and just to keep your supplier accounts accurate and up to date. So before we get started, just a quick reminder that we’ll share a short feedback survey at the end of our session. And again, as a thank you, one lucky respondent will win a blunt umbrella.
And the survey link and the QR code have been shared in the chat. And feel free to drop your questions in the Q&A at any time of the session. And I’ll do my best to cover them during the Q&A. But if we run out of time, I’ll follow up with you afterwards.
I’ve also shared a link to the Esker documentation about statement reconciliation in the chat for future reference. So let’s get started.
Right, so what is Esker? What is statement reconciliation in Esker? It helps you match your supplier statements against Invoices in Esker Accounts Payable module. It helps you identify any missing, unmatched, or discrepant invoices.
and it actually highlights reconciliation exceptions that requires your attention.
And what are the benefits of you doing the statement reconciliation? Of course, it improves accuracy. You get to identify discrepancies before they impact payments. It saves you time, reduces the manual effort in supplier reconciliation.
and you ensure that every invoice is accounted for. So that actually gives you confidence that no supplier invoices are missed.
And just a note, statement reconciliation compares data against your Accounts Payable records within Esker, and it doesn’t query your ERP system.
So now that we’ve covered the purpose and the benefits of statement reconciliation, let’s see how it works in Esker. So I will proceed to the live demo.
Me.
All right. So there are two ways to receive statements in the AP module. One is through e-mail. So you send a statement from your supplier to the Esker inbound channel dedicated to the statements. And option two is through uploading the statement in Esker by
clicking button, clicking a button that is usually found in your dashboard and it’s called upload supplier statement. So just like this here, so I have a button that says upload supplier statement.
And for demonstration purposes, I’ll click on the upload supplier statement button. Please note that I’m currently using a demo environment. So the Invoices and data shown are sample records only. And also your screen may look slightly different from mine due to the version of your escrow module.
Any customization that you’ve done in your solution and user permissions.
So I will click the upload supplier statement.
Okay, so in the form, we have two parts. One is the statement details on the left here, and on the right will be the document itself. So how do you upload the statement? You just click select or drop a document to process. So you can click on the…
on the button or you can drag the file over to the document preview. So I will choose my file.
Just a moment.
Right, so I’ve chosen my file here, so I’ll click OK.
Okay, so now you can see that the statement is already uploaded. So on the document preview here on the right side, you can see that you get the same options, just like in the invoice form. So you have all the options, including the conversation. So that means it’s just like the invoice form. You can communicate with anybody in
in the organization using the internal conversation.
Right? So on the left side, we will go to the statement details first. So most of the time, the statement details, the company code is automatically filled in, and the statement date is automatically extracted from the document. But if you need to modify it,
you can do so. So for demonstration purposes, I will change it to the correct company code. And then statement date, I will choose September.
Right? So that is for the statement details. Now we move on to the supplier information. So in the supplier information, the number and the name of the supplier who sent the statement are automatically filled in as well with the data retrieved from the reference tables based on the supplier information and extracted from the
the statement. So the supplier is determined by their telephone or possibly their name and address. If you need to modify them, you can do so as well. So here I will set it to MJ.
So I’ve already populated the supplier information. So now that we have the correct information in the statement details and supplier, we can proceed to the next step, which is the statement line items.
So in order for you to fill in the line items, you have to click and extract the first line first from the document, and then you can do that by click and extract. So for extracted date, I’ll click on the field and then double click here.
On the date, and then extracted number would be the invoice number, and the extracted amount would be the amount on the statement. So, after doing so, you don’t have to do it manually for everyone. Once you’ve filled in the first line, you can click on the refresh button.
In here.
So it may take a while, depending on how big the file is or how many transactions escrow is trying to pull from the statement. Okay, so as you can see here, we’ve already pulled everything from the statement.
And you will also notice here on top, just below the statement date, there is a reconciliation status, which is unmatched, missing items in Accounts Payable. So that means there are missing information in Accounts Payable or vice versa. It can be missing in the statement or also in the
Esker Accounts Payable Module.
Right? Okay, so you can see all the transactions are here. There are different match, there are different statuses, but we’ll go to that in later. I just want to highlight that all the information on there extracted, those are extracted.
did date, extracted number, and extracted amount. Those are all from the statement document.
while the information on the right will be all the information that’s available in your Accounts Payable module within Esker.
Right, so the invoice date, the number, amount, currency, invoice status, so what’s the current status of that invoice, the due date, payment, ERP invoice number, and then you will have a
you have a view button here. View button is once you click that.
it will route you to the invoice form itself. So you can, you don’t have to actually go to supplier Invoices tab and then search for the invoice number. You can do that already in the statement form.
All right, so what’s important here is for you to check the status of the transactions. As you can see, we have here match, we have unmatch, and then we have mismatch. So match, obviously, it shows all the information in the listed Invoices.
It means that it fully matches the information on the statement and also on the Accounts Payable. So that means we receive the invoice in Esker. Unmatch, it means that if you can see here, we have it in the statement. However, we don’t have it in the Accounts Payable module.
So that would mean, that would mean the supplier hasn’t sent it to esker or hasn’t sent it to you. That’s why it’s not available in your esker module.
And then there’s also mismatch. There, the invoice is available in the statement and also in FSO. However, there are information that doesn’t match. So for this example, in the statement, it shows that the date is August 3, 2026.
But in AP module, it shows the invoice date was set to August 4, 2026. So that is a discrepancy or some mismatch in the invoice date.
So what do you do with that? If you want to correct the information so that it will match, you can scroll to the right and then click the View button here.
So on the View button, just remember the discrepancy was in the invoice date. So what you can do is you can correct the invoice date to match the extracted date here.
And you do that only if you are, if the correct date is actually the August of August 3, 2026.
But if the information that you can see in the statements is incorrect, you can actually contact the supplier to correct the information.
Okay, so what I’m going to show you is how do how do you match it to the correct one? Okay, so this is
Okay, August 3.
Let’s see here.
And then you click on Save.
So once you’ve corrected the invoice date there.
you have a match button here. So match button is the function of that is if you correct any information in the AP module and you want to rematch the information, you just click on match here.
And now they, if you can see, they are changed to match because you’ve already corrected the date.
Game.
All right, so let me go through the button. So you have matched, which I just discussed just now. Archive, if you are happy with the statement information here, you don’t have to follow up with the supplier or anything like that. You can click on archive. So that means you have already validated
The statement.
Reject, if you are rejecting the statement, it could be that you’re not happy with the statement reconciliation, so you reject it. Just remember that once you reject the statement, there will be no pop-up window for you to confirm it. So once rejected, it will be rejected.
right away. So you have to be sure that you are rejecting this statement.
Save and quit. If you have updated some information and you don’t want to archive it yet, you can save it first and then quit the statement.
Quit is once you click on quit, it’s just like in your invoice form. You want to log out from the statement without saving any information that you’ve amended.
Send e-mail, this is where you can actually communicate with the suppliers. So in the send e-mail, you can, there’s a from, just that is you as a user and your e-mail address. And then to will be the e-mail address of the
the supplier. So in this case, this is to MJ supplier. I can CC anyone in the e-mail, even though, even if they are not escray user. And then you can put in the subject here.
So, I will just, um, maybe put a sample e-mail here.
Like that. So please note that you can actually put in a screenshot, a screenshot of maybe a screenshot of part of the statement so that you can properly communicate to the supplier which one are you referring to. So you can do that as well.
Importance, formatting and options. We usually don’t change this. You can stick with whatever is currently set, but you can definitely change it depending on your preference.
and then you click OK, then it will send an e-mail to your supplier.
Export, you click on export here. It will just download whatever information you have in this portion, the statement line items. So that is just for you to have a copy that you can save locally or you can share.
to the team.
Right? Okay, so once you are happy with your statements, like for me, I’m okay, so I will click on archive.
So once you click on archive, it will go to, it will be still recorded. It’s no longer going to be in the statements to verify. It will be under the archive, rejected or cancelled statements view.
So that’s how you actually go back to the statements that you have already validated or even rejected. It’s recorded here.
PP.
I’ll go through a Q&A here. I think we have a few questions here.
Okay, hi Joe. If the invoice has already been posted or paid and the date is incorrect, and if I cannot change in the invoice, what is the best way to handle it? Assuming statement date is the correct one. Actually, if it’s already paid, the statement is just for you to match. You can still contact your supplier just to clarify things. However, we cannot
We cannot edit the information in the AP module anymore.
Can we able to correct posted invoices in escrow? I think that’s the same question as before. We cannot correct the information anymore because it’s already posted or paid. So what you can do is you can contact your supplier
in a separate, separate or in the send e-mail button to inform the supplier.
Where do I find the upload statement option in the dashboard? I usually do it via e-mail. We can enable this one for you. We can, I’ll contact you after our know-how at noon webinar so that we can get that upload statement.
button in your solution.
We don’t have the chat function on our escort statements. How do we get this turned on? Thanks. Again, it depends on the version or customizations of your solution. I will contact you after our webinar today to check further on your solution, because it’s not going to be the same for everyone.
So it depends on your solution setup.
Hey, let me see if there are any other questions here.
Is there a way to send only mismatched or unmatched lines? I see that you can add a screenshot, but sometimes they don’t appear together, which makes it difficult to capture them all in a single screenshot. No, the answer there is no.
Because in the send e-mail, it’s just like you sending an e-mail via Outlook, but it’s just that it’s within Esker and it’s going to be recorded under that statement. So unfortunately, you have to take a screenshot and maybe edit the screenshot just to make sure that you only refer or send
the specific transactions to the supplier.
Is there a way for statement matching to pick up invoices with rejected status in esker? It should, it should, it should also pull up the rejected invoices because it’s in still is still within esker. If it doesn’t,
If it’s not happening on your end, please do contact us and create a ticket so we can check it for you.
If we accidentally reject a statement, can we revive it or do we have to upload it again? So I have an example of rejected statement here.
There is no way for you to restore or revive. You can only export. So you have to upload the statement again.
Is there a report that we can schedule to give an overview of the status of statement reconciliation? Thinking about this from a reviewer and manager perspective, definitely there will be, there’s a report available for us to schedule. We’ll just have
to do it on your solution. I will contact you after our webinar so we can get this set up.
Okay, good. We have a lot of questions. Is archiving is the best way to store it after matching and reconciling their statements? Yes, correct. We archive it so we can keep a record of our statements.
How big the statement can escrow handle? For example, can escrow deal with statement with hundreds of invoice lines? As per escrow documentation, it can handle until 1,000 invoice lines for statement reconciliation.
Anything else?
Can you have more than one company code used for one statement? You can only choose one company code in the statement. You cannot choose multiple company codes. So you have to ensure that you have selected the correct company code.
Any more questions?
All right, that’s it for the live demo for statement reconciliation. However, I would like to go through some possible enhancements that you can do in the statement reconciliation page.
Okay, so it’s possible to add an extracted, add a total extracted amount. So it’s actually going to show some of the sum of all extracted amount fields from your statement line items table. So some of our customers have requested to add this field here, so you don’t have
to scroll and scroll to total up all the extracted amount in the statement. So that’s a possible enhancement in your statement reconciliation. We can do this in your solution, depending on your version, and it’s going to be done under change requests. So if you’re interested, you can contact our customer success.
Another one is, I believe some of our customers would like to see the Payment terms column added to the statements to verify. So that also can be done via change request.
And we can also add a customization to add a checkbox or flag for when an e-mail is sent. So if you remember, you can send an e-mail to the suppliers in the statement reconciliation page, but it doesn’t keep our record currently, but there is a customization available.
for the customer. So if you’re interested, you can contact the Customer Success.
Kay.
Yep, and those are the possible enhancement. But if you have anything on your mind that you think would be good to have, or it’s necessary for your team to have in the statement page, please feel free to contact us. You’ll never know. It’s possible. We’ll just have to check the technical feasibility.
with our technical team.
Right. So we’re done with our Q&A. And I would just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone who has received an invitation to the Esker Customer Day to register and join us for an afternoon dedicated to you, our valued customers.
and all things Esker. And while you are there registering, don’t forget to nominate yourself or your team or any of your colleagues for the biggest champion and best results awards. So we’d love to celebrate that day with you, with the incredible achievements and success stories within
our customer community. So we look forward to seeing you there.
Hey, and thank you for joining us today. Again, please complete the quick questionnaire before 28th of October, 5pm, just to help us improve future webinars. And again, you might win a blunt umbrella, which is perfect for our weather now.
Okay, if you have any questions and I’ve missed to answer it, I will reach out to you individually to answer your questions.
Thank you very much for your time today. You have a good day.