Supplier Invoice Automation (OCR) FAQ

Machine learning (ML) begins to work 2-3 weeks after:

1. Opting in to the Innovation Services Agreement
   • Note: You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature based on your organization's subscription service agreement. Refer to Streamlining Feature Adoption and the Workday AI Home Page for more information.
2. Running at least 1 invoice through OCR, either manually or through email ingestion.

We use Workday ML to convert text-based fields into instances for Company and Supplier. Workday ML supports English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and Dutch. 

We use Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as a third-party OCR processor that returns formatted text to Workday. We’re currently using their invoice parser. The list of languages they support can be found here.

If an invoice is scanned in a non-Workday ML supported language, we should be able to get the text from GCP. However, we would expect much lower accuracy specifically for company and supplier fields because Workday ML isn't supported.

Public Cloud (AWS) tenants support OCR Invoice Scanning for the United States, Canada, Asia-Pacific (Singapore, Australia), and EU regions only. 

Supplier Invoice Automation (upload and scan) supports: PDF, JPG, JPEG, TIF, TIFF, GIF, PNG, BMP, WEBP, and DOCX.

No, supplier contracts and leases are currently not supported with supplier invoice automation.

OCR isn’t compatible with Supplier Invoice requests currently.

Machine Learning with supplier invoice OCR only learns from Company and Supplier values. Currently, all other fields aren't using ML to learn. ML training uses all invoices with an attachment for learning/training, regardless if scanned using OCR or not.

Yes! We recommend:

1. Only opt in to Supplier Invoice Automation in the tenant you're testing in.
2. Don’t test in Sandbox - this can cause a poor experience because of the refresh frequency.
3. On the initial testing, initiate testing in an Implementation or Preview tenant - don’t test first in Production.
4. Pick 1 tenant type to test in at a time. Testing across multiple tenant types at the same time doesn't yield a comprehensive training dataset. 
5. If you’re testing in an Implementation tenant, there's an additional step that you need to follow. For more information, review How do I turn on Supplier Invoice Scanning capabilities in my Implementation tenants? in the FAQ.
6. Finish testing before you turn the feature on in Production. Once you turn it on in Production, Workday no longer learns from other tenants that you have connected to invoice automation.

 It depends on your customer subscription service agreement:

• Innovation Service Agreement (ISA): Run the On-Demand Machine Learning Activation for Implementation Tenant task in your Implementation tenant once, and select the box next to the row for Supplier Invoice Automation - Scanning:

The feature powered by ML will be ready to test within 2 weeks after activation. 

Note: There's no change in the existing opt-in steps, namely opting in to the Supplier Invoice Automation - Scanning Innovation Service and then opting in to the various data categories after that, both of which are accessed using the Innovation Service and Data Selection Opt-in tasks. The above step is an additional one. You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature based on your organization's subscription service agreement. Please reference this Community Announcement for more information.

• Universal Main Subscription Agreement (UMSA):  you can choose 1 of the following  2 tasks:
  • To support on-demand data extraction from IMPL tenants (this extracts data only once): Run On-Demand Data Contribution Activation for Implementation Tenant, OR
  • To run the extract periodically in IMPL, you can check the checkbox in Maintain Weekly Data Contribution Activation for Implementation Tenant.

Note that if you are testing in multiple implementation tenants, Workday will learn from the tenant with the most data. If you need to move testing to another tenant, you should opt out of the feature in the previous tenant first.

To initiate OCR model training for a company in your Workday tenant, you need to scan at least one invoice for that company through either the Upload and Scan tab in the Supplier Invoice Work Area or through Email Ingestion.

Machine Learning trains on invoices that are approved and have a single invoice attachment. Invoices with multiple attachments will not be included in learning-  remove additional attachments from an invoice if you need to have it included in training.

We recommend 15 invoices per supplier (you expect to do OCR with) for training purposes. If you have multiple companies using OCR, we also recommend at least 50 invoices per company.  Workday will only apply learning to the suppliers and companies you train with.

You can use the Put OCR Invoices web service to load invoices for ML training.

While we use data from all customers to train our core invoice automation model, the resulting learnings are applied uniquely within each customer's tenant.

Workday's machine learning doesn’t learn from customer data to enhance OCR accuracy. However, it does use customer data to improve accuracy in mapping supplier and company extracted from invoices to the relevant entities in Workday.

During the transition from Implementation tenants to Production tenants, the learning from invoices that have been uploaded in the Implementation tenants is carried over to their respective Production tenants. Therefore, you don’t need to re-upload invoices that are already present in the Implementation environment.

However, Workday will undergo a process to optimize the machine learning models for supplier and company matching after the transition. This optimization might take up to 2 weeks to achieve optimal results.

Once you have turned on scanning in your production tenant, Workday will no longer learn from invoices in your implementation tenant. You should not turn on supplier invoice acanning in production until you are ready to use the feature there.

For most invoices, the processing time should be no more than 3 minutes. However, if Workday returns a Time Out error or the process stays in the status of In Progress for longer than 20 minutes, contact your support team for assistance.

Factors that can affect the processing time include the size of the invoice, the quality of the scanned image, and the complexity of the invoice layout.

No, assign the access accordingly to the individuals involved in the testing process.

This option is available depending on if the invoice line is PO or non-PO:

• PO invoice lines: Yes, touchless is available. 
• Non-PO lines: No, OCR creates the invoice in draft. Once the AP Data Entry Specialist edits and submits the invoice, it’s routed through your Supplier Invoice Event and follows the approval policy on that event.

Create a custom validation on the OCR Supplier Invoice Object.

Workday currently doesn’t look to match the scanned invoice lines to PO lines in production tenants. Starting with 24R2, you can configure PO line linking in your preview tenant. Review this setup information. We expect to deliver PO Line Linking for OCR supplier invoices in production tenants in 25R1 (Safe Harbor).

You have 2 options for picking up the PO if it is not detected during the scan:

1. Use the PO Override to select the correct PO for the invoice, and the attachment is retained.
2. Select the document, then the Create Supplier Invoice button, enter the PO number, and Submit.

Workday can create supplier invoice adjustments from scanned invoices if you enable Create Supplier Invoice Adjustments from OCR in Edit Supplier Accounts OCR Tenant Options. This always attempts to create an adjustment for credit memos or negative total amounts. It might not work every time, in which case, the convert supplier invoice task might need to be used.

Yes, the invoices created from OCR run through the same match process as your other invoices.

Use the Supplier Invoice OCR Scanning Details report. When you run this report wide open, it pulls all the OCR details for every invoice scanned in. Currently, we don’t have a report that tracks trending or accuracy over time, but you can adjust this composite report to pull in data from the created invoice.

Workday OCR can interpret dates in the MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY format. Date formats using “-” are also supported.

The table below has the statuses in Upload and Scan, their results, and possible actions that you might want to take:

Completed: Scan produced a Supplier Invoice in Draft.

In Progress: Scan hasn’t started yet, or is currently being scanned.

Error - File type not supported: The format of the file you uploaded isn’t supported. Refer to these supported file types. Retry with a file of a supported file type, such as pdf.

Error - Not scannable: The document uploaded is illegible or too blurry. Upload a clear and readable document.

Error - Service failed: Contact your support team for assistance.

Timeout: Scan was In Progress too long, never scanned. Retry scan.

Canceled: User canceled the scan.

Manual: User created Invoice manually from the scan.

For OCR Scanning Failure Reasons and recommended actions to resolve, refer to the Administrator Guide: OCR Scanning Failure Reasons

Yes. You can default the company upon upload by entering the company in the upload and scan tab or default a company value using Edit Supplier Accounts OCR Tenant Options.

Yes, you can set up worktag recommendations for Spend Categories, Cost Center, Region, and Location using these steps. Workday suggests these recommendations when the invoice is opened for editing but won’t populate them automatically. These recommendations apply to all invoices regardless of the method of entry.

For spend categories, you can alternatively default a spend category on the supplier. If you set up the default spend category on the supplier, the non-PO invoice lines populate with that spend category. Worktags and spend categories from Purchase Orders will default on the invoice if the invoice was linked to the PO at scan, or by using an override.

OCR uses the Supplier Name, Address, and Phone Number to determine the supplier.

You can find more information about configuring work queue tags for OCR on the Supplier Invoice Scanning - Setup video starting at 19:22. 

Yes, check out our Next Level presentation on Supplier Invoice Optical Character Recognition (OCR): Email Ingestion. Learn more about the email ingestion service: Email Ingestion with Twilio SendGrid Integration FAQ.

Workday uses Twilio SendGrid to ingest emails into Workday. No additional contract with Workday or Twilio is needed, as you agree to use this service with the Innovation Services Opt-In. You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature based on your organization's subscription service agreement. Refer to Streamlining Feature Adoption and the Workday AI Home Page for more information.

Note: SendGrid currently only has data centers in the US, so check with your IT team to make sure this complies with your company policies.

Yes, if you want to use email ingestion for supplier invoices, opt in to Supplier Invoice Automation. You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature based on your organization's subscription service agreement. Refer to Streamlining Feature Adoption and the Workday AI Home Page for more information.

No, you don’t need an email with the subdomain. When you manually forward or set up emails to forward or redirect to the subdomain, you can enter the address before the @ with whatever makes sense for your users. Example: redirect rule setup as REDIRECT@workday.apscan.com. Add your AP inbox (or email receiving the invoices from suppliers) to the allowed senders list on Configure Email Ingestion Settings.

Workday recommends different subdomains in Production and non-Production for Email Ingestion. Each subdomain can only be attached to 1 tenant at a time.

The feature is generally available in Production and can be configured in any tenant.

It can take up to 48 hours for the relationship between your subdomain and Twilio SendGrid to be established. Once you’ve verified the connection setup, you should be able to ingest emails sent to the subdomain. Note: if you sent the email before verification, then it won’t display in the tenant.

To avoid the no company assigned issue, we recommend setting up a Default OCR company and have the Disable ML Company Matching set to No. With this configuration, if there’s no ML match, the invoice is created with a default company and displays in My Work Queue. The processor can update the company when they open and edit the invoice. If you don't go that route, another option is to place a critical custom validation on the OCR Supplier Invoice object to prevent creation of the supplier invoice when there’s no OCR Suggested Company from the scan. In this case, the attachment should be held up in Upload and Scan and would likely need to be manually flipped to an invoice.

Workday can handle attachments with up to 30 pages.

Workday can upload up to 50 attachments at a time using the Upload and Scan functionality in the Supplier Invoice Work Area. The number of attachments that you can ingest through 1 email is limited to the maximum attachment size limit on your email server. On Outlook this is typically 20MB.

Each attachment is handled as its own invoice.

All attachments are treated as invoices. Each attachment is represented as its own line item and is sent for scanning. Example: An email has 3 attachments. All 3 will be in the Workday, with a comment as to which attachment was used to create the invoice. This can be seen on the Supplier Invoice Optical Character Recognition (OCR): Email Ingestion presentation at 17:15.

The draft invoice created from OCR in the Work Queue can be deleted. If a scanned attachment failed to upload due to file type, you can use the Do Not Show functionality to hide it in the tenant and cancel related attachments.

Note: Supplier training will only user supplier invoices with a SINGLE attachments. Invoices with multiple attachments will not be used to train the algorithm- you should remove extra attachments if you are training in your tenant.

Within the US and EU,if you’ve enabled multi-invoice in Edit Supplier Accounts OCR Tenant Options, Workday pulls the invoice data from the attachment into separate Workday invoices. The attachment itself won’t be parsed. When you open up the invoice in split screen you’ll see the entire attachment, not just the page that the invoice is referring to.  

However, it's important to note that for OCR operations performed outside of the US and EU, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) currently lacks support for handling multiple invoices within a single attachment. Our team is actively working on a solution to address this limitation and enhance the functionality of GCP for OCR in these regions.

PNG, JPG, and JPEG attachments are ingested if greater than 20KB in size (Ignored if less than 20KB). PDF, TIF, TIFF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, CSV, TXT attachments are ingested regardless of size. All of these file types are sent to OCR, even though OCR doesn’t support all of these types. When OCR doesn't support the file type, the scan for that attachment fails. All other file formats in the email are ignored.

Customers: Post questions and review answers in the Financial Management Discussion Forum.

Partners: Post questions and review answers in the Implementation Discussion Forum. 

• Note: If creating a new question in either forum, select these Product Tags:
  • Using Workday: Supplier Invoices
  • Product Area: Accounts Payable