January 14th & 15th 2025, Release Note: Inventory: Document Processing Service and Site Recipe Cost Report

Summary

Select the release feature from the table below to be taken directly to that section of the release note.

Release date for all features: January 14th (US) & 15th (EMEA & APAC) 2025

Document Processing Service

• Enabled by default? - No
• Set up by customer admin? - No
• Enable via support ticket? - No - please liaise with your Fourth contact
• Affects configuration or data? - No

What's Changing?

Fourth is now able to ingest invoice and credit notes provided in PDF or other image file formats. The invoice/credit note data extracted from the image files can be matched against an existing purchase order.

Reason for the Change

This accommodates suppliers unable to integrate with Fourth's 'Trade Simple' platform electronically, automates non-PO invoice creation (for suppliers who do not receive purchase orders, such as service or utility suppliers), and eliminates manual data entry, improving accuracy and efficiency.

Customers Affected

Customers contracted to use Fourth's Document Processing Service - please get in touch with your Fourth Account Manager to discuss further.

Release Note Info/Steps

Invoice and/or Credit Note data can be extracted from PDF or other image files provided in the following ways:

• Your suppliers send their invoices as PDF attachments to a bespoke email address, hosted by Fourth but bespoke to your business
• Your own accounting team can scan physical paper invoices and send them as PDF attachments to the same bespoke email address
• Paper invoices can be scanned/photographed and uploaded at the time of receiving, via the Receiving app 

Regardless of how the invoice or credit note is received, it will be processed by the Document Processing Service and the resulting data pushed to the Inventory platform where it will be threaded to the appropriate order/GRN as per all other electronic invoices.

As well as applying the data extracted from the invoice to the order/GRN there will also be a link to see the original document sent by the supplier.

In the 'Document Search' and 'Document Reconciliation' screens there is a new 'Attachments' column. When an invoice as originated from an image/PDF file, a paperclip icon will be displayed here (see Fig.1).

Fig.1 - 'Attachments' column, 'Document Reconciliation' screen

Fig.2 - 'Attachments' column, 'Document Search' screen

When selecting an invoice to view its details, there will be a View link to the original invoice image under the Transaction Details section (see Fig.3)

Fig.3 -Link to view the invoice image in the Invoice detail page

New Terms/Acronyms 

Document Processing Service (DPS) - Fourth's AI-powered service for extracting structured data from PDF or other image files.

Site Recipe Cost Report

• Enabled by default? - Yes
• Set up by customer admin? - No
• Enable via support ticket? - No
• Affects configuration or data? - No

What's Changing?

Introduction of a new report that will show the current site-specific cost for recipes within a selected site.

Reason for the Change

Whilst most recipes are common across an organization, the actual cost of producing them can vary. Sites may purchase different alternate ingredients or be on different price bands with their suppliers. As a result, site-level recipe costs can differ to those shown in RME.

Customers Affected

Those using both RME and Inventory.

Release Note Info/Steps

• Go to Reporting > Published Reports > Stock Management
• The new report is named Site Recipe Cost Report

When running the report the following criteria can be used:

• Site - it is mandatory to select a site
• Menu Group - filter on one or more Menu Groups/Sub Groups
• Category - filter on one or more Categories/Sub Categories

Fig.4 - Report criteria

The report will return the following fields for all qualifying site recipes:

1. Location Name - the selected site/location
2. PLU - the site-specific PLU assigned to the recipe
3. Recipe Name
4. Recipe ID - the internal ID of the recipe which will be prefixed with either B for batch recipes or R for regular recipes
5. Recipe Cost - the overall site-specific cost of the recipe
6. Ingredient Name
7. Batch/Recipe ID - where the ingredient is itself a recipe the internal ID of the recipe will be shown prefixed with either B for batch recipes or R for regular recipes.  
8. Number - ingredient purchase quantity number
9. Quantity - ingredient purchase quantity
10. Unit - ingredient purchase unit
11. Site Cost Price - the supplier's cost price specific to the site
12. Price Band - price band assigned to the site by the supplier
13. Supplier Name
14. Supplier Code - the supplier's product code for the ingredient
15. Quantity - quantity of the ingredient in the recipe
16. Unit - the unit of the ingredient in the recipe
17. Recipe Cost - the cost of the ingredient in the recipe

Note:

• Columns 1-5 will be against each ingredient within the recipe as these are recipe-level fields
• Column 7 will only be populated where the ingredient is itself a recipe or batch recipe
• Columns 12-14 will only be populated where the ingredient is a purchased product and not a recipe or a batch recipe