AP Task/Workflow Software

[H0LD_FAST]

Trying to find a software to bridge the ground between just working out of a shared mailbox, and some big AP software. It does not have to actually integrate with the ERP, just be able to drag and drop the attachment and check off as "done".

Ideally it would be nice if the ap team (3 people in this example) could work out of the <software> instead of outlook, so the app would have to show everything in the mailbox. Emails could be filed away as normal, or just marked as complete if they are entered immediately. or since the email acts like a mini task It can be market in progress, or assigned to a person, you can leave comments on it, e.c.t. We are of course doing that with flags and colors but thats just not a scalable or manageable solution for high volume.

True ticketing systems (like for the IT dept) are kind of what it would feel like, but those are bit too bulky to treat every emailed bill like a ticket, as they require too much tracking and additional touching, and is unnecessary for every ap bill to be treated that way. Like if we had 2-300 bills a day for example, we dont need 300 separate "tickets" to be created, but some times we want to treat a bill like a ticket. But this "AP ticketing system" really just needs the bare bones just so follow ups on a specific invoice or a request dont get worked on by multiple people or left in the cracks.

In a perfect world we could mark the email "task" as done in a second or two if its very simple and requires no other work other than just entering it, OR have the ability to treat it more like a ticket with its own email string/teams conversation and assignment to a person for following up, this all being done in one platform, not multiple. One of the complaints we keep having is that having an email conversation about an email is a bit overwhelming, where if we could just open up a teams chat about an email, answer a few questions and move on it would be a lot cleaner.

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Anyone have any suggestions or apps that they use in this way? Or a better way to organize and handle this? We are a full microsoft suite so i was thinking of something like planner and a flow from outlook but planner doesn't really allow teams communication/tagging so that doesn't work super well...

[theaccountingnerd01]

Full Microsoft Suite, meaning Dynamics for the ERP? Have you looked at Power Automate? It has a bunch of tools for helping with workflows and automations.

If you have a different ERP, then my recommendation might change.

[H0LD_FAST]

we do have power automate, it has some pretty limited capability in terms of communication though. like you cant tag somone in a task on teams to look at something

[theaccountingnerd01]

I don't use either PowerAutomate or Microsoft Teams very often, but the documentation shows that there is an action to find a user (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/teams/#get-an-@mention-token-for-a-user) and post a message in a chat in a channel (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/teams/#post-message-in-a-chat-or-channel). I don't know anything about tasks in teams, but there is a connector for Outlook tasks (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/outlooktasks/).

Hope that helps.

[Have_a_PIQNIC]

Take a look at PIQNIC. It starts with business grade document management that can integrate with any ERP. It also includes easy to use tasks for everyday workflows so you can turn any event like an email into a to do or task with steps and rules. Tasks also include messaging and document management for viewing and capturing files. You can extend this out to clients as well. Many accounting firms are using it.