A rule of thumb: Optimize invoice definitions associated with important suppliers.
Which suppliers are "important" in your system depends on various factors. Here is one method of selecting invoice definitions to optimize:
In the Invoice definitions dialog, sort the invoice definitions by the All-time total column.
Select the invoice definitions that represent a large number of processed invoices for your company. For example, select every invoice definition that has been used 75 times or more.
Tip: More recently established suppliers may have sent in, say, 25 invoices in two months, so consider refining your list to include those suppliers who average 10 invoices a month.
"Important" has to do with the overall time that Verify operators spend working with these invoices. Therefore, deselect suppliers that you think are not so important, based on that criteria.
Alternatively, pick out the suppliers that Verify operators spend the most time working with. ReadSoft REPORTER can be used to gather those statistics, if they are not already known.
Deselect suppliers that you know are no longer active.
Aim to include suppliers that account for roughly 75% or more of all incoming invoices, or the suppliers that are consuming the most time during the Verify process.
Lots of poorly optimized invoice definitions can make INVOICES run less effectively than if those invoice definitions had not been optimized at all.
Small improvements to frequently-used invoice definitions can result in much faster verification.
Changing only the most obvious invoice definition settings is an important habit to develop, because:
The actions of Verify operators can automatically update and override invoice definition settings that you have manually adjusted in Optimize.
Extreme manual tuning of invoice definitions may provide good performance for the current conditions (scanner model/condition/settings, database condition, version of INVOICES, and so on), but there is no guarantee that performance will continue at the same level when one or more of these conditions changes.
The goal is to achieve the biggest interpretation improvements with the least amount of Optimize work.
Recommended: Create a maintenance plan that automatically deletes unwanted invoice definitions at regular intervals.