Best practices

Automatic Sending Process

The ideal process to send invoices automatically from Open Bee™ Portal : Chorus Pro Connector is as follows:

  1. The user prints the invoice from his ERP, he uses a virtual printer that will create a PDF document that will go to a directory scrutinized by Open Bee ERP Manager.
  2. Open Bee ERP Manager will interpret the invoice, retrieve the information from the different areas and send the invoice in Open Bee™ Portal.
  3. The invoice is filed and archived in Open Bee™ Portal. 
  4. If the invoice matches a Chorus Pro submission criterion, it is integrated into Open Bee™ Portal : Chorus Pro Connector.
  5. The invoice is sent to Chorus Pro for analysis, this operation is mandatory.
    The Chorus Pro system performs an ocerization, the result of this ocerization is used only if there is no metadata association for the field (Manual Submission Case).
    After this step, the invoice has a status of “To submit”.
  6. If all the necessary information is present, a green icon is displayed. This means that the invoice can be sent automatically.
  7. Automatic sending is done every 15 minutes.
  8. If invoices could not be sent automatically, a red icon is displayed. You can hover over the icon to see the error message.

Optimize automatic sending

To make automatic sending as smooth as possible, here are some recommendations:

Showing the SIRET number of the public entity on the invoice

If the SIRET number is displayed on the invoice, it can be used in the association of metadata with the recipient identifier field.
This means that this SIRET number will be used to search the Chorus Pro directory to find the value of the recipient.
As the SIRET number is unique, the search result in the Chorus Pro directory will return only one result and in this case, the recipient will be automatically selected.
After you send an invoice for this public entity, a line will be created in the Recipient Management configuration.

Include the public entity’s service on the invoice.

The service is information that may be mandatory depending on the recipient’s configuration.
In order to have as few errors as possible on the automatic sending, it is relevant to have this information on the invoice.
If your ERP allows you to add this information to the invoice, don’t hesitate.
In Recipient Management, you can set up an association for services. 
For example, if the value of the service on your invoice is “Logi”, you can associate this value with the Logistics department of the public entity.

Showing the commitment number

The commitment number is information that may be mandatory depending on the recipient’s configuration.
In order to have as few errors as possible on the automatic sending, it is relevant to have this information on the invoice.
If your ERP allows you to add this information to the invoice, don’t hesitate.

Don’t overload the bill with information

If you don’t want to visually overload your bills with information like the SIRET number of the public entity or the department, you can display them with a white text color.
Open Bee ERP Manager is able to read this information even if the text is white on a white background.
Thus, the necessary information will be present on the invoice but visually it is not overloaded.

High volume of invoices to be sent

If you have a large volume of invoices to send to Chorus Pro, here are some tips:

One print per document

If you print invoices from your ERP with a virtual printer, you can tick the box “One print per document”, this will relieve the processing of Open Bee ERP Manager.
For example, if you print 150 pages, Open Bee ERP Manager will not have to cut out a large PDF file of 150 pages.
Printing will be slower but processing Open Bee ERP Manager and sending to Open Bee™ Portal : Chorus Pro Connector will be much faster.
Similarly in Open Bee ERP Manager, this will make it easier to find a processing error. 

Cutting into batches 

Try making batches of invoices. Print in batches of 100, 200 or up to 500 invoices.

Check the availability of Chorus Pro APIs

If Open Bee™ Portal : Chorus Pro Connector is not available, for example because the Chorus Pro APIs are under maintenance, it is not wise to send a large batch of invoices as they will have to be reprocessed.

Similarly, certain time slots are more conducive to malfunctions, for example on Fridays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., unavailability of the platform is regularly noted.

Ranking Rule

The metadata used by the Chorus module comes from an Open Open Bee™ Portal collation rule.
Here are tips for setting up the ranking rule used in Open Bee™ Portal : Chorus Pro Connector.

Distinguishing the invoices to be sent in Open Bee™ Portal : Chorus Pro Connector

To distinguish between invoices for private companies and invoices for public entities, you can use a “routing” or “routing” metadata.
For example, a text-type metadata that may have a value of “Chorus” if an invoice is intended for a public entity.
This means that in your ERP, you can distinguish between a private invoice and an invoice intended for public entities and thus make a keyword appear on the invoice.
In Open Bee ERP Manager, the invoice template must be configured to take into account the area where the keyword appears.
It will also be necessary to update the metadata association between Open Bee ERP Manager and Open Bee™ Portal.
So, if this keyword is found on the invoice, it will go into Open Bee™ Portal : Chorus Pro Connector

Mandatory Fields (Metadata)

It is not essential to make all the fields of the classification rule mandatory.
Indeed, if an automatic sending process has been deployed, it can even be detrimental to the customer.

Let’s say that metadata is missing from a customer’s invoice, such as the recipient’s service.
If this service metadata is mandatory, there will be an error between Open Bee ERP Manager and Open Bee™ Portal and the invoice will not be archived.
For the customer it is better that the document is archived, even if the invoice is in error when sending to Chorus Pro.

Don’t make all metadata mandatory.

Metadata type

Open Bee™ Portal : Chorus Pro Connector offers flexibility in terms of the type of metadata.

For example, for an amount, we can use both a decimal number and text.
For example, the text allows you to write an amount  in this form 1,423.56, i.e. with a space for the thousands separator and a comma.
Whereas the same number will be written this way for a decimal type 1423.56.
There will be no consequences on the sending of the invoice by Open Bee™ Portal : Chorus Pro Connector because the spaces are removed and the comma is converted to “.”.