Web Access for A/R Documents
Imaging’s Web Access module provides a simple way
to give your customers 24x7 access to copies of their
own documents, right from your web page. Instead of
having to call your company and use up your accounting
staff’s time, they can get instant access to the
documents they need anytime, 24 hours a day.
Some companies who have installed Web Access have
reported that the number of in-bound calls to their
accounting department has dropped by 50 to 100 calls per
month. The time that used to be taken up responding to
these calls can now be used for more productive tasks.
Web Access can be set up in two ways. It can be
set up as a stand-alone web page, where the users log on
to the Web Access page directly. If your company already
has a web portal for e-commerce, for example, Web
Access can be set up to run as a task inside of the
existing portal.
In the first method, the user either clicks on a link on
your web page or goes to the Web Access page
directly. Before being given access to the page, the
user must log in with a valid user ID and a password.
These are used to limit the access of the user to only
the customer folder that matches the user ID.
Once the user has been authenticated, they are shown a
single web page which contains your company’s name and
logo, any other graphics you want, and a few “fill in
the blank” boxes. The boxes are typically something like
“Invoice Number”, “Order Number”, “Statement Date”, and
so on. You decide which documents you want your
customers to be able to see.
The customer fills in the appropriate box or boxes, then
submits the search request. Imaging locates the
documents that match the request, converts them into PDF
files, and displays them on the web page. The user can
then view, print, download, or save the PDF file.
In the second method, it is assumed that the user has
already logged in to and has been authenticated by the
web portal software. In this case, the web portal
created the “fill in the blank” screen and the search
request. The search request is then passed to imaging,
which locates the matching documents, converts them to
PDF format, and hands them back to the web portal for
display.
Both options accomplish the same thing, namely,
providing instant access to copies of documents. The
only difference is which software is providing the
security and the display functions.
In either case, a hosted web server is set up in Web
Access’s data center. One of the obvious facts is
that, for a server to be used by someone across the
Internet, that server must be available to the Internet.
Equally obvious, you do not want to have any of your
live servers directly accessible by the Internet. All of
your servers should be behind the firewalls and other
security devices.
ITG has a very secure data center. ITG’s
customers include most of the Superior Courts in
California, along with a number of hospitals. Both of
these groups require that a very high level of security
be maintained. The hosted web servers in our data center
are protected by that same level of data and network
security.
Every night, after the normal tape backup runs on your
imaging server, a second, incremental backup is run
which copies any new or changed data to the off-site
hosted web server. This ensures that the hosted web
server is always up to date. Whenever a customer makes a
request for a document, they are only retrieving
documents from the hosted web server, never from your
own live imaging server. This protects your system and
your data from any unauthorized access attempt.
An added benefit of this architecture is that it creates
a built in disaster recovery plan. With Web Access,
not only do you have the backup tapes from the nightly
backups, but you also have a complete, full copy of all
the data on a live server at a geographically remote
location. Should there ever be a fire, a flood, a broken
water pipe, or anything else that damages or destroys
the live imaging server, all the data is safely stored
and can be instantly accessed with no loss.
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Web Access for A/P Documents
While most companies initially install Web Access
to help the A/R department, it works just as well for
the A/P department. There are a growing number of
companies who now use Web Access for both A/R and A/P.
On the A/P side, vendors are able to review copies of
purchase orders, delivery receipts, and A/P checks
on-line.
Just as with the A/R department, the goal is to reduce
the amount of time required to handle questions from
vendors. By giving vendors direct access to certain key
documents on the Internet, the amount of time that must
be spent by the A/P department staff can be reduced
significantly.
The vendors do not need any special software or
training. All of the documents are presented as standard
PDF files on a normal web page. Any vendor with access
to the Internet and with a valid user ID and password
can view the documents in their own vendor folder.
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Samples of
Web Access Screens |
1.
Customer Log in
Screen Customer must log in with a
pre-assigned User Name and Password.
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2.
Document Retrieval
Screen Customers can search for a specific
ticket or invoice number, for variety of document types,
or for a document date or date range.
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