Vendor invoices drafted as Acumatica bills, from the receipt line to the subaccount.

Today a clerk opens Bills and Adjustments, leaves the type on Bill, chooses the vendor and copies the invoice number into Vendor Ref. Acumatica fills in the vendor's location, terms and due date. In a plant, Add PO Receipt pulls in what was received; on a contractor's books, each line also takes a project, a task and a cost code. Then the bill comes off hold, waits for its approver and is released. The keying is short. Choosing the right receipt line, subaccount and project task is what fills the afternoon.

In the proof of concept, AI works from copies of bills your team has already released, with the receipts or subcontracts behind them, and drafts each one in Acumatica's own shape: summary, detail lines and the link on each line, with a note on where every value came from. Nothing is saved or released in Acumatica. Your reviewer opens each released bill beside its draft and marks what doesn't agree.

Vendor Ref. and the repeat check. The vendor's invoice number lives in Vendor Ref., which stays optional unless Require Vendor Reference is selected in Accounts Payable Preferences. A second preference there, Raise an Error on Duplicate Vendor Reference Number, refuses a new document whose number is already in the system, though the help says reversals and releases of recurring documents aren't checked. Users report that with it cleared Acumatica still warns, and one contractor found that releasing retainage on imported bills failed on that check, because the release reused the original bill's reference. The draft copies the number exactly as printed and names any earlier bill from that vendor carrying it or a near match, leaving the call to a person.

The subaccount is assembled, not picked. On a line with no inventory ID, the expense account comes from the vendor location; on a non-stock item line, from the item. The subaccount is then built by the Combine Expense Sub. From mask in Accounts Payable Preferences, which takes each segment from a set source: the branch, the employee, the non-stock item, the vendor location, or, with projects turned on, the project or its task. So a vendor set up under the wrong location can post to the right account with the wrong department segment, and nobody notices until month-end. The draft spells out the account and each subaccount segment with its source, and flags every line where your team overrode the mask by hand.

Receipts first, unless the vendor allows otherwise. Allow AP Bill Before Receipt is a check box on the vendor or on one of its locations, and its state is copied to every purchase order for that vendor. Cleared, lines for stock items, and for non-stock items that require a receipt, can be billed only once the receipt is processed; selected, the receipt and the bill can come in either order. Add PO Receipt and Add PO Receipt Line on the bill list that vendor's released receipts not yet fully billed, and the bill line then carries the PO number and receipt number. Where the bill's unit cost differs from the receipt's, the difference posts to a purchase price variance account. The draft names the receipt line behind each invoice line, the quantity still unbilled after it, and the variance it would leave.

Holds, totals and the approval map. With Hold Documents on Entry selected, each new bill starts On Hold. Validate Document Totals on Entry adds an Amount box, and a bill reaches Balanced only after someone types the invoice total there, a second check on what the lines add up to. Approval is switched on per document type, each with its own approval map. Separately, Require Approval of Bills Prior to Payment keeps unapproved bills out of Prepare Payments, yet the help notes they can still be paid from Checks and Payments. Each draft gives the total for that box, the status the bill would land in and the map your rules would send it to.

Vendor status, 1099 boxes and the construction tabs. A vendor on Hold Payments can't be paid, one On Hold can't be used at all, and a One-Time vendor goes inactive once paid. On a 1099 vendor, each bill line takes the vendor's default 1099 box, which a person can change. Contractors on Acumatica Construction Edition see more on the same form: project, task and cost code on every line, a retainage percent, a Joint Payees check box with the amount owed to each joint payee, and a Compliance tab. Compliance Preferences can generate conditional and unconditional partial lien waivers automatically and, with Prevent AP Bill Payment selected, stop payment of any bill whose waiver is outstanding. Your reviewer, usually the AP lead or the project accountant who keeps your Acumatica setup, will look hardest at Vendor Ref., subaccount segments, receipt links and retainage, since each is a chore to reverse once a bill is released.

Once the drafts meet the success criteria, new supplier and subcontractor invoices get the same drafting for about 30 days.

Someone on your AP team approves, corrects or sends back each draft before a bill exists in Acumatica, and your approval maps run on it afterwards just as they do now. Your Acumatica administrator decides how approved drafts get in: keyed from the sheet, or loaded with an import your company already runs. Releasing bills and preparing payments stay with your team.