End to-end solution for cost documents flow using JIRA
- 2. Background Every company require flow of cost documents. Receive physical document, reconcile and then book and pay. It is part of process usually named procure-to-pay. Invoices which are related to purchase order, usually has their acceptance. But there are also without it (for example based on agreement) and without prior acceptance. In this case, we need also solution to gather business acceptance before booking and payment.
- 3. Initial situation • During the change of ERP, workflow system for documents was phased-out. • In transition to new ERP there was need for: – Tool to support required workflow – Proper description of the process – Avoid documents „lost” in the process on transition between branches – To track the status of the document
- 4. Non-software improvement • Barcodes for each document for unique identification • Special scanner with ADF and barcode identification (PDF file name is named by barcode automatically)
- 5. JIRA Service Desk is an „add-on” to JIRA, which is designed generally to aid IT service desk. The main advantage is the portal, which can be used by any employee to create ticket. In our case to start flow of document on reception.
- 6. JIRA Service Desk portal JIRA Service Desk is usually used by IT department, but the concept may be used in every department. In our case we configured only one option for document flow.
- 7. Approvals • Jira Service Desk has built-in approval • List of people for approval can be automatically created or defined on the moment of initial ticket creation. • Each step can have different group of approvers. • We can require certain number of approvers to approve.
- 8. JIRA Service Desk flow JIRA can be used as workflow engine. In our case it was: 1. Enter document by receptionist in web portal and assign acceptant’s from business 2. Business acceptance – each acceptant can use portal to accept 3. Controlling verification – predefined set of approvers 4. Financial approval – predefined set of approvers 5. Booking – predefined set of approvers. Approval is confirmation of job done. 6. Payment – predefined set of approvers. Approval is confirmation of job done.
- 9. Permissions • Only employees on the path of approval can see the invoice • Anyone with access to the invoice can share with anyone in organisation. • Problem with full view from the portal. You need full license to access every invoice and make reports on the progress.
- 10. Reporting • You can analyse quantity of invoices in each state • Time performance of the process by Service Level Agreement metric. You can track if document flows according to predefined time. Business acceptance Controlling approval Financial approval ...
- 11. • Only persons who are managing the process (agents) need full license. • All other employees, which are participating in the process using the portal, doesn’t require any license.
- 12. • In this case Implementation took around one month • Easy change management due to easy portal interface • You can implement change into the process (like new process status or custom fields) in one day and we actually did it. • No coding required – only JIRA administration • There are tons of add-ons you can get, to solve new business problems. • That’s why it can be sometimes better then workflows in ERP. The flexibility is key.
- 13. • People can’t add approvers in the flow with only portal access. You need full license to change list of approvers. So if someone in acceptance process think, that someone else is needed, he can’t add him. This can be unpleasant if you often select wrong approvers on initial state. • You can’t force acceptant to add attachment during acceptance. • The search in portal is only based on subject. So if you have custom field with invoice number you won’t be able to search based on this field. • You can report which invoices are awaiting approval, but you can’t easily get info for who’s approval we are waiting for, from the list of approvers.
- 14. • Implement reporting of the documents status – automatic Excel report sent by email periodically. This way, we will avoid need for a lot of full licenses to see full picture. • Automate assignment of the approvers based on supplier of cost type = less work on reception