SAP Invoice Health Check

SAP is of course everywhere.  However, a quick internet search gives consistent feedback: complexity.  And this complexity is not just the implementation and day to day use, it’s reporting and diving into that complexity.

Our data analytics tools proved to be well positioned to enter this world, with their ability to tie together the myriad of tables, look for data inconsistencies and perform analysis at the most granular level before aggregating upwards.

CPRA’s invoice VAT analysis application detects anomalies and potential invoice inaccuracies in SAP invoice data.  It’s a line by line bottom up reconciliation analysis and tax data quality check.  In general, identifying and correcting any tax issues yourself leads to a far better outcome than the tax authority discovering anomalies via a random audit.

The data structure sometimes does not help, record sets often consist of line items which contain different depths of data: a field which is relevant for all lines in a record set may only by populated for one line item.  So data needs to be cascaded (where appropriate) across the line items.

And the data is a mix of line detail, subtotal and grand totals, so even summing across rows is not possible.

On the other hand, SAP provides structure: consistency of fields names, consistency of flags and metadata.  To the extent that SAP has been somewhat conventionally implemented then analysis can become plug and play but we also retain the flexibility to adapt to any client customisation or combine other data sources.

The end result is an invoice and tax health check /audit, a series of KPIs build on an array of bottom up calculations and reconciliations.  A dynamic dashboard (of course) presents the results in a way that allows the deciphering of the record set-line item aggregation levels.

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