Welcome to the AP Robot Community!

We created a User Guide for the AP team. Click on the “?” question mark for the Help menu on the Robot Toolbar. Then click “User Guide” to open the detailed guide of how to use the Robot.

Click on the “?” question mark, in the help menu at the top right of the Robot toolbar. Then select “About” this will give you the page counts for your entire company.

Click on the “?” question mark, in the help menu at the top right of the Robot toolbar. Then select “About”, This will give you the version number you are running.

Version Example: 01.11.2023 = The version you are running was built on January 11, 2023.

When you click “Auto-Post” in the Robot Settings, it will allow the Robot if it finds a perfect match, to auto-post to SYSPRO for you. It will only post the Invoices that have a 100% match for GRNs and PO’s. If it can’t find both of those, it stops in the “posting exceptions” tab. If we are not 100% certain of the match, we don’t post. In addition, you can always make adjustments in SYSPRO after posting should that rare need arise.

DASH AP Robot will go out to SYSPRO and get copies of so the Robot can operate faster (i.e., Tax Codes, GL accounts, etc). If you were to make changes to the SYSPRO side, you could exit the Robot and refresh the data, or you can click the “Refresh ERP Data” and it will go get the new data.

Another use for this button is if you switch between companies. If you have more than 1 company, you can log out and log back in with a different company and it will automatically “Refresh ERP Data” for you.

One of our clients logs them as a negative misc. charge.

Let us know if you have other ideas!

You should split the PDF prior to submitting it to the Robot. Many PDF editing tools allow this – Adobe, Foxit, and many others.

Currently, the Robot cannot read Credit Memos.

An exchange rate of “1” in the AP Robot will equal no exchange rate change for that Supplier (the total multiplied x1 will not change the total). If the exchange rate is “1.32” the Robot will do the math to calculate the new total with that exchange rate. The exchange rate is set in SYSPRO at the Supplier level.

The PO determines the currency selector. For Non-PO invoices, the Robot will look to the SYSPRO setting default you have set up. You can change the amount as needed.

It is recommended that each AP Robot user has their incoming queue so that 2 people aren’t trying to pull the same invoices in to work with, at the same time. Since the Robot pulls from this folder and works on the Invoices locally, it might create duplicate work and waste time if 2 people tried to open the same Invoices to work on & it may result in unexpected errors due to collisions between users. Having your own incoming queue will protect your team from duplicate work and working on an Invoice simultaneously.

No. The Robot will create an AP journal for each individual invoice.

We are not able to batch these into one single journal.  The Robot is written in a way that we don’t ever leave a SYSPRO connection open so we will connect, do our data IO and then disconnect.  This makes it so we don’t interrupt your user while they use SYSPRO and the Robot together, but it also means we are not able to batch the journal entries.

1st put all invoices into your incoming queue folder, then open the Robot and click “Analyze” for all invoices for both companies.

Next, go into the Robot and under “Settings” click on “SYSPRO Settings” and ensure you are working in the correct company for the 1st batch of invoices you will work on. Change the company information as necessary and then click “Save”. Then work on and Post all invoices you can for the 1st company. When you are done, go into “Settings” and change the company, then click “Save”. Now finish the remaining invoices in your work queue for the 2nd company.

Yes each Robot user should update their settings. One main setting to verify is the “Allow Variance” checkbox. If you allow variances, you’ll want to make sure and check this box and have it post a test journal entry. The only reason to uncheck and then recheck the variance option is to force it to re-test whether it can post to SYSPRO. Once you’ve done that test you don’t need to do it again.

The settings are saved only in 1 place, so no need to redo them all just because you have a second company.   After the test, you can just change the company login info to attach to a different SYSPRO company.

%appdata%\dash\ap-robot\processed\backup

The exceptions are in the “processed” folder.

%appdata% changes depending on which user is logged in, but it’s basically a user-specific work directory for a lot of programs (including AP Robot).

The Robot will store all the posted invoices for a rolling 30 days in the posted tab. After that, they will not be on the list. It’s used as a quick reference, but not long-term storage.

DASH DDX (document management) is recommended for long-term storage. All Invoices once they are posted to SYSPRO will be stored for long-term storage and retrieval there. All documents related to that Invoice are stapled together electronically for lookups.

The “Save As” button will save the invoice you’ve selected as a PDF in the destination of your choice.  This could be used to save an invoice before you delete or post it.

Yes, we recommend avoiding uploading other documents that aren’t the invoice for 2 reasons:

1. The Robot will read all the extra pages of documents and try to use this information to process the Invoice (usually this extra unneeded information confuses the Robot!) Use a program (i.e., Adobe) to separate pages and only put the Invoice into the Robot’s incoming queue folder and

2. You can save yourself a little bit of money because the Robot’s costs are based on the amount of usage. Fewer pages mean lower costs.

The Validate PO button re-checks the invoice against the PO. It reads the PO and re-validates the invoice, grabs all of the GRNs, etc. against live data in SYSPRO. It is something that also happens when and if you change the PO# itself (after you click off of the PO# field). It’s useful if there’s new info to be picked up from the PO, or if you change your PO#. The same validation occurs during the Analyze process if a PO# is identified.

The Robot only reads PDF files. Make sure you convert all incoming files you want the Robot to read into PDF before placing them into the Incoming Queue folder.

Yes! We highly recommend working through invoices that have already been analyzed while the Robot continues to display new invoices for your review.

When you click Email with an invoice open, it will open Outlook with the selected invoices as an attachment so you can email it to anyone you wish.

The merchandise account on the Supplier Master record will be used as the default GL account for non-PO invoices.  Also, the Freight account on the Supplier Master will be used as the default GL account when dealing with freight.   For non-PO invoices, if you assign (or re-assign) a supplier after the initial Analyze, the Refresh GL button will grab the default GL account(s) from the supplier record.

The AP Robot can automatically locate the supplier in many cases. This is done by using the supplier’s address. We don’t use the supplier name for this purpose because most often it’s shown as part of a logo, or with other highly stylized text. Address tends to be more reliable. We have a short section in the AP Robot User Guide (from the help menu) that talks about how we match to a supplier. That would be worth reading so you know what to look for, and how to improve the odds of an automatic match. It does involve having your addresses in SYSPRO match what is seen on the invoice. But check the manual for more details.

Like any time you copy a file to some place where that name already exists, Windows will display a message indicating such and asking if you want to replace it. This is a function of Windows, not the AP Robot since you’re using Windows to perform the copy.

This is the date that the PDF was created. Typically it is the date the PDF was created when your supplier created it, or if you scanned it, it would be the date you scanned the document.

In the GRN section of the screen, hold down CTRL + F (control find) and it will open a search box where you can input the description and/or part number. All items that fit that search will be displayed.

It begins with OCR technology, and the extracted data is verified by AI to ensure it is more accurate than traditional OCR. Then the AI goes a step further in extracting actionable data from the page such that it matches a description, like a phrase “Invoice Number”, with the actual invoice number data. This allows a program to look for known or expected phrases to match the extracted data with what SYSPRO expects. That can then be done – more often than not – even if the program has never seen an invoice from a particular supplier before, and regardless of where the data resides on the page.

This will be as easy as updating the server name and port in each instance of the Robot’s settings.

YES! Communicate with DASH Support even faster now. From the Help menu (?), choose “Email Support“. This will open an email to ddxSupport@Dashdev.com. That email will include a copy of the Invoice you currently have selected, and related data. This is particularly useful if you have an issue with a particular invoice that you wish to bring to our attention. It gives us a fairly detailed picture of your current situation. Of course, you should also include some description of the problem you’ve encountered; how you got there and any other info you feel is pertinent.