Map e-documents to purchase order lines with Copilot (preview)

As procurement processes become more digital, the e-documents feature in Business Central plays a key role in automating the vendor invoice reception and processing. Copilot can help this process by improving the mapping and matching of vendor invoices to purchase orders. This assistance reduces time spent on tasks that would normally include extensive search, lookup, and data entry. Another benefit is when vendor invoices don't relate exactly with purchase orders. In which case, Copilot is well positioned to identify the corresponding purchase orders. Enhanced matching capabilities particularly benefit small and midsized organizations that need efficient document tracking for purchase order lines. Copilot is the AI-powered assistant for work that boosts creativity and improves productivity for Business Central users.

In the initial release of the e-document app, we introduced fundamental scenarios for e-documents for the entire sales process. However, there's a need for enhancements and automation in handling the received documents, especially in the context of purchase processes. Copilot refines how you manage e-documents in the purchase process, particularly with respect to purchase orders. The e-documents framework lets you specify the type of purchase document to create for each vendor when you receive e-invoices from them. Previously, the only option was to create a purchase invoice, either as a document or a general ledger journal.

You can now update an existing purchase order in Business Central with the information received in the e-invoice.

Available languages

This Copilot feature was validated in English only. While it can be used in other languages, it may not function as intended. Language quality may vary based on the user’s interaction or system settings which may impact accuracy and the user experience.

Activate Copilot

If you didn't activate the E-Document Matching Assistance Copilot, you must do so manually. To enable the E-Document Matching Assistance copilot, follow these steps:

1. Select the icon, enter Copilot & AI Capabilities, and then select the related link.
2. In the list of capabilities choose E-Document Matching Assistance and change the status to Active.

You can start using Copilot as soon as you activate it.

Identify purchase orders

First, you can identify the purchase orders that you can automatically match. If your Vendor configured the Receive E-Document To field to work with Purchase Orders, when the electronic document is created in Business Central (manually or from an external endpoint), Business Central does the following:

1. If the Purchase Order for this particular vendor exists and there's a purchase order number in the received E-Document file, Business Central automatically links this E-Document with the specified Purchase Order. The Document Status of this E-Document is In Progress, and the E-Document Status in the Service Status subpage is Order linked.
   This link is visible in the Document field on this specific E-Document. If you need to change the Purchase Order linked automatically, you can do so by using the Update Purchase Order Link action and then manually choose one of the existing purchase orders for this vendor. You can only do so before matching the lines between E-Document and Purchase Order.
2. If the Purchase Order for this particular vendor exists but there's no purchase order number in the received E-Document file, if you uploaded this document manually, Business Central allows you to choose from one of the existing purchase orders, opening the Purchase Orders list from the orders that you got from vendors containing only E-Document, where you need to select Purchase Order you want and select OK. If you don't select the right Purchase Order, or you got the E-Document automatically from an external endpoint using the Job Queue, the new E-Document isn't linked with a purchase document and the Document Status shows as Error and the E-Document Status in the Service Status subpage is Imported document processing error. To finish linking the Purchase Order, choose the Update Purchase Order Link action, and then choose one of the existing purchase orders for this vendor.

Map lines

Copilot helps you automatically match e-invoice lines with purchase order lines, and offers extra matching intelligence to improve the matches.

After they're matched and mapped, Business Central updates the matched purchase order with the relevant receipt information to ensure the right quantities are received on the order lines.

You can match your received electronic documents with the purchase orders’ lines from two different places, from the E-Documents page or from the Purchase Order page. The easiest way to locate the already linked Purchase Orders is to use the Linked Purchase Orders tile as part of E-Document Activities. All nonlinked documents are found using the tile Waiting Purchase E-Invoices where you have a list of E-Documents that you must review.

When you want to run matching from the purchase order, choose the Map E-Document Lines action, which exists on both the purchase order and purchase order list pages. But, if you want to run matching from the E-Documents page, choose the Match Purchase Order action from this page. To process with matching, follow these steps:

1. Choose the Map E-Document Lines or Match Purchase Order action, for already linked documents.

2. You can notice that E-Document Match Order Lines with Copilot prompt is working and you have the Purchase Order Matching page in the background. That means the same process is happening, but with the automatic support of Copilot, who runs the process of matching instead of you.

3. After a few seconds, the E-Document Match Order Lines with Copilot will suggest lines for matching with some more details:

   1. In the prompt header, you can find the following information:

   Field name	Description
   Auto-matched	Specifies the number of matches proposed automatically. This number is based on a string comparison and if there's 80% or more description overlapping, the system matches these descriptions automatically without using Copilot capabilities.
   Copilot matched	Specifies the number of matches proposed by Copilot using both string and semantic comparison.
   E-Document No.	Specifies the linked e-document number.
   Invoice Total Amount Excl. VAT	Specifies the total invoice amount excluding VAT.
   Matched Total Amount Incl. VAT	Specifies the matched amount excluding VAT.

   2. If all lines are matched, you see the green text in the upper-right corner: All lines (100%) are matched. Review match proposals.
   3. In the Matched proposal lines, you find the following information:

   Field name	Description
   E-Document Line No.	Specifies the e-document line number (coming from the original e-document file).
   E-Document Line Description	Specifies the e-document line description (coming from the original e-document file).
   Matched Quantity	Specifies the quantity that is applied to the purchase order line.
   Proposal	Specifies the action proposed by AI, and these suggested actions are related to matching the purchase order lines.

   4. All fully suggested and matched lines are marked with green color. If there's an issue, for example, a different price but within the allowed price range, this line is marked with a yellow color. If there's any similarity between the description fields but the price difference is larger than allowed, this line is marked with a red color.
   5. If you aren't satisfied with some suggestions, you can delete them using the Delete Line action.
   6. If you want to see proposal matchings, you can select the link in the Proposal column to open the E-Document Match Details page.
   7. On the E-Document Match Details page you can compare details from the E-Documents and Purchase Order, to be sure about the suggested matching before confirming it.
   8. After reviewing, close the page.

4. If you aren't satisfied with most of the suggestions, or in a case you don't want to use the E-Document Match Order Lines with Copilot feature, select Discard it, and you can continue with the manual matching.

5. If you want to keep suggestions, choose the Keep it button and the system saves all suggestions made by the Copilot.

6. Business Central closes the Copilot prompt and lines on the Purchase Order Matching page are marked as green, as they're already matched.

7. From now on, you can continue to work as you're doing manual matching, and that means you can remove matches, manual matches, reset matching or if there aren't any changes you want to make, just choose the Apply To Purchase Order action and continue working with the Purchase Order.

See also

E-documents overview
Use e-documents in sales
Use e-documents in purchase
Troubleshoot Copilot and AI capabilities
Responsible AI FAQ for bank reconciliation assist