Utility bills do not usually include an invoice number. However, most ERP systems expect an invoice number. You can decide how to approach this discrepancy by configuring the Utility Bills setting in the Settings > Invoice Processing > Capture Profiles > Invoice Number Settings.

The following values are available:

• Extract - InvoiceNumber field is mandatory.

• Skip - InvoiceNumber field is not mandatory but the AccountNumber field is not mandatory.

• Generate if not extracted - both InvoiceNumber and AccountNumber are mandatory.

  An invoice number is generated when:

  1. The Utility Bills setting in Settings > Invoice Processing > Capture Profiles > Invoice Number Settings is set to Generate if not extracted.

  2. No InvoiceNumber value is extracted from a document.

The generated invoice number is a combination of the invoice date and the invoice number. The two fields are concatenated and separated with a hyphen (-).

When generating the invoice number any formatting rules from the InvoiceNumber field settings are applied. For example, if the Remove All Specials setting is selected then all non-alphanumeric characters are excluded from the generated invoice number. These formatting settings are defined in the Settings > Invoice Processing > Capture Profiles > Field Settings.

An invoice number is generated based on the extracted invoice date and account number. Depending on the extraction results, the following scenarios may occur:

• If both the account number and the invoice date are successfully extracted an invoice number is automatically generated. This generated invoice number is valid in this circumstance because both of the other fields are valid. If either or manually changed by a user, the generated invoice number is updated accordingly.

• If only one of account number or invoice date is extracted there is no generated invoice number and the document must be validated manually. A generated invoice number is created after validating the missing field.

• If the invoice number is successfully extracted, but either the account number of the invoice date are not, the document is sent to the Validation activity for manual validation of the missing field.

If the Validation activity user enters a value for the InvoiceNumber this value is preserved, regardless of any changes to the AccountNumber of the InvoiceDate fields. This is because it is possible that the InvoiceNumber failed to extract but is printed on a document. When the user enters this number it is retained and cannot be overwritten, even when changes are made to the other fields that would normally overwrite the InvoiceNumber value.

If the InvoiceNumber is set to a generated value and the Validation activity user changes the AccountNumber or the InvoiceDate and both values exist, the generated invoice number is updated based on the changed value.