We recently converted to Blackbaud FE and this year we are testing the functionality of Expense Management. Not receiving warning regarding duplicate requests is a big NO for us. It would be very helpful to have the requestor received a notification and be directed to accounting for verification and / or assistance.

I agree, not sure why this would not warn you. We have paid duplicate invoices a few times because the system does not warn us it was already entered. This is a huge problem especially if you have multiple people entering invoices.

I would think that just giving them a message stating something to the effect that the invoice number they have entered is already associated with the vendor they have selected, and to please contact the accounting department for verification and/or further assistance. 

While we are on the topic of entering invoices via expense management, is it also possible to NOT bring over the $$$ amount when copying a previous invoice in E.M.???  We have had a few times where people forget to change the dollar amount to the new invoice amount, and the wrong amount ends up getting paid.  Personally, I would rather have to re-enter the amount every time, even if it is the same for every invoice, and get a warning that no invoice amount has been entered, than to just have the same amount get carried forward erroneously.

I agree that it would be more helpful if the person submitting the invoice was  notified that it is a duplicate.   For us, they could look in their history of requests for the duplicate and if they don't find it, confirm with Finance.

Thanks for the feedback Mike, very helpful. Initially, our concern with the above implementation was that a requestor (someone that may or may not have the back office/accounting knowledge) might not know how to proceed and as a result get stuck. To help us understand your use case a bit more, If we were to bring the error message forward to the person submitting the request, what would you expect them to do upon receiving that error message?

I recently created another username/email address for myself and added it to the approval flow so that I would be the last person to approve invoices in expense management before the invoice is actually created.  I did this so that I would know if any duplicate invoices were being created, and not just the CEO who was previously the last person in the approval flow.

I tested it, and yes, I did receive a notification that a duplicate invoice was detected.  I still wish the FIRST person to create an invoice would be notified however, instead of having a duplicate invoice go all the way through the approval flow and each person thinking "didn't I already approve this???"

Hello All, sorry for the inconvenience here. For users that have the setting to Do Not allow - the prompt should occur at the point where the invoice record is created. If that is NOT happening, create a case with support so that we can understand what's going on a bit better.

We have our business rules set to "Warn User", but yet when a duplicate invoice is submitted in Expense Management no warning pops up.  I tried changing the setting to Do Not Allow Duplicate Invoices, but was able to submit duplicate invoices without any issues or error messages. I don't think this setting works the way it is supposed to in NXT's Expense Management. 

I agree with this!  We have had staff submit duplicate invoices, and I have paid them, because this double-check does not work.

Hi Patrick, Thanks so much for the feedback. The duplicate criteria that is currently used is set up within Database view in Accounts Payable > Configuration > Business Rules > Invoices. If Invoice number is listed and the setting is set to Do Not allow duplicate invoices, this invoice should not get created.