Onit's Appeals function offers clients and vendors a streamlined process for reconciling adjusted fees or expenses. When an invoice is adjusted during the review process, clients can efficiently resolve disputed line items by sending the invoice back to the vendor for review.
The vendor can then appeal any adjustments, providing justifications or supporting documentation for their charges, or accept the adjustments and the invoice will continue processing for payment.
Here, well bring you an in-depth guide on how to use the Appeals feature during the invoice process.
Setup Notes
Note that an Onit implementation specialist will initially enable the Appeals functionality in the Billing Point and ELM administrative settings.
You'll also need to update your Configuration Settings to enable appeals. Heres how to do this:
1. Navigate to Configuration Settings within the ELM Configuration application.
2. Click Edit to update the settings.
3. Scroll down to Invoice Settings and click the check box under Appeals Functionality.
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4. Fill in the How many amount of business days the vendor has to appeal once the invoice has been sent back field.
5. Fill in the How Many Times the Invoices Can Be Appealed by Vendor field.
6. If your organization employs a third-party reviewer to examine invoices and appeals, fill in its contact information under Third Party Reviewer Emails.
NOTE: If left blank, the person designated as Invoice Reviewer 1 will have the appeal capability.
7. Click Update to save changes.
One final note: to use the Appeals function, you must also enable Appeals during the Vendor Assignment to Matter (VATM) process.
To do this, just check the Appeals Functionality box on the VATM screen during the process.
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Using the Appeals Function
1. To use the Appeals function, open an Invoice for review.
2. Make any needed line-item adjustments (at the bottom of the screen) or invoice level adjustments using the Adjust Invoice button at the top of the screen.
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3. After the adjustments are made, click the Send for Appeals button on the right-hand side of the screen.
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4. From there, users will see a message at the top of their invoice screen that details how many days the vendor has left to appeal the invoice.
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Additionally, you'll get this message at the top of the invoice screen letting you know that you're in the Getting Vendor Acknowledgement period.
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The vendor will receive a notification email notifying them of the adjustment and letting them know how long they have to appeal the invoice. Vendor users will also receive a notification on the invoice directly within their BillingPoint account and see a banner on the top of the screen reminding them of the appeals deadline.
Vendors will see the line items that have been adjusted at the bottom of their screen.
5. If they are okay with the adjustment they can simply click on Acknowledge Invoice Adjustment and send it back to the designated next approver on the client side.
If the vendor wants to file an Appeal, they'll first need to fill out a line-item comment on the page detailing their requested change:
From there, the vendor will see the details of their appeal at the top of their BillingPoint page and can click Appeal to send the information back.
After clicking Appeal, the vendor will get a message asking them to confirm that you have completed all appeals via line item comments. This is done to attempt to cut down on as much back-and-forth as possible between parties. The invoice will then go back to the designated first approver for review.
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6. Client users will see the appeal come up in the Invoice sections with details about the dispute. From there, if you agree with the appeal you can remove the adjustment by clicking on the line item and then Remove Adjustment.
7. After that, click on Approve Invoice to finalize the invoice with the removed adjustment.
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However, if you want to send the invoice back to the vendor, add whatever comments you have in response to their input and click back on Send for Appeals (this option is determined by the number of appeals you have input in the original settings).
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Repeat the appeals process until both parties are satisfied.