Onit's Spend Agent reviews invoices submitted by vendors in Billing Point against natural language billing guidelines uploaded against vendors by Onit clients. To read more about the benefits of this feature, click here.
This guide will take you step-by-step through using Spend Agent in your invoice workflows.
NOTE: Spend Agent is an optional add-on feature available for purchase within Onit. Please contact your Onit representative for pricing details.
Setting up Spend Agent / Initial Workflow
NOTE: An Onit specialist will need to enable Spend Agent within your system.
Spend Agent is the third step in the invoice workflow process with BillingPoint.
- First, LEDES or Manual Invoices (or invoices via API) are submitted to BillingPoint.
- The BillingPoint Rule Engine validates the invoice against Billing Rules. If the invoice fails, or it finds violations to fix, the invoice goes back to the vendor for edits.
- From there, the invoice goes into Spend Agent for AI review.
- In BillingPoint, if the invoice passes the Billing Rules, vendors will receive the AI Sent notice on their screen:
NOTE: When an invoice goes to Spend Agent and no billing guidelines are uploaded, Spend Agent sends back an update to BillingPoint alerting users that the guidelines are missing and the invoice was not processed.
5. Within ELM, you can determine what happens next on a per-vendor basis. Navigate to the Spend Agent page on a vendor screen.
On the Spend Agent Mode drop-down menu, you have three different options:
- Disabled (Spend Agent is disabled)
- Auto (Spend Agent-reviewed invoices are automatically processed)
- Sentry (Clients will review and approve)
Underneath the drop-down menu, you’ll see the field to upload Billing Guidelines.
Click Update to save your changes.
From there, there are four paths the invoice can take:
6. If auto-processing is enabled and it passes the AI check, the invoice will be approved. Vendors will see this message on their screens, with an AI Spend Agent Approved note at the top.
7. If auto-processing is enabled and it fails the AI check, the invoice will appear as FAILED within BillingPoint and will be back with the vendor for edits and resubmission.
8. If auto-processing is not enabled and the invoice passes the AI check, the invoice will appear within ELM for client review and approval. Note that the AI Spend Agent: Approved badge will appear on the invoice.
On BillingPoint, the invoice will appear in the Pending Approval stage; note the AI Spend Agent: Approved badge at the top of the screen.
9. If auto-processing is disabled and the invoice fails the AI check, the invoice will appear within ELM for manual review with the Spend Agent fail insights detailed on the Invoice screen.
Users can then decide to Dispute the invoice, contact the vendor, approve anyway, or perform any other next steps.
Note that, within BillingPoint, the invoice will display as Pending Approval to the client with the validation warnings at the bottom of the screen; AI Spend Agent: Approved will still be displayed as a badge in the upper-left corner.
Under the Invoice New View screen, users can see an AI-generated Invoice Summary of potential issues, along with Spend Agent Insights (potential total savings, billing error corrections, rate adjustments) on the right-hand-side of the screen.
Within the Invoices screen, users can check the Reviewed by Spend Agent column to see if the specific invoice has been checked by Spend Agent.
Users can also see what Mode Spend Agent is in and whether or not Billing Guidelines are uploaded.
