The problem

An italian Public Administration had the need to resolve two main problems: 

1. Italian Public Administrations, since March 31^st 2015, have the obligation to receive only electronic invoices (FePA) and to send the related confirmations. An invoice for Public Administration, however, must first pass through the Exchange System, that verifies if the format of the document is correct and if data are complete.
   The Public Administration (PA) can interact with the Exchange System (ES) via certified email (PEC), web services, or FTP protocol and within 15 days from the receipt must accept or reject the invoice.
   This PA was looking for a solution that would make it easier the acceptance or rejection of invoices, that would communicate with the Exchange System and that could automatically insert into the ERP the information about the received electronic invoices.
   Without Station the company would have to
   
   • manually download invoices
   • translate invoices from the XML format to a readable format
   • dispatch them manually to the final user having charge of them
   • Manually enter the invoices data into the ERP
2. The PA must also upload documents certifying the payment of the received invoices into a portal dedicated to the Certification of Credits. This Public Administration, so, needed to manage in an optimized way all the process, automating manual operations.

The solution offered by Arket

FEPA

For receiving and sending files it was decided to use the PEC (certified e-mail) channel: this ensures a safe and traceable communication of the processed documents. Station, moreover, natively supports the management of certified e-mails.

The procedure followed by Station consists of different phases:

• Periodical check of a PEC mailbox created for the purpose
• Download of invoices and attachments
• Processing into the system, that consists in the recognition of the document (invoice or attachment), the data extraction with a special template and the normalization to a generic data structure.
• Each document is assigned, according to pre-established rules, to a user that via Station Client will be able to view, control and proceed with the approval / rejection of the invoice. The user action on the invoice ends with the acceptance/rejection of the document.
• Composition by Station of the message of Customer Outcome for the invoice and dispatch to the Exchange System, that will provide the subsequent processing.
• Saving to a database and dispatch of the accepted invoices to the company ERP.

Certification of credits

When an invoice is accepted, or the term for lodging the acceptance/rejection of the document expires, the ES communicates to the platform for the Certification of credits the existence of a debt due. The public administration is obliged to communicate the payment of the invoice to the platform for the Certification of Credits.

This is done by Station, which periodically checks the management system for all payments relating to registered invoices, and uploads on the platform for the Certification of credits the closed payments. Station then provides a feedback to the user on the carried out operation.

This Public Administration receives about 4000 invoices per year, with widely varying amounts. It also has a high number of suppliers.

With Station, the whole process of management of incoming invoices, which otherwise should be handled manually, has been automated, requiring only to the end user to control and accept / reject the incoming invoice.