The types of documents that are in-scope of Unilever's e-invoicing project and that you will be able to access in the Document Manager are:
- Invoice
- Invoice Copy
- Remittance Advice
- Purchase Order (PO) Copy
- Credit Note
In order to view the status of your documents using Tradeshift, please open the Document Manager app (1), which will display all documents sent or received by your Tradeshift account:
Using this app, you can search for specific documents using the Search bar (2), add filters to show a specific set of documents by clicking on Apply Filter (3), and edit the columns of the Document Manager with the Customize View button (4). By clicking on this button (5) you can also download the current view as CSV (5). The Due Date (6) column indicates the due date of the payment for that particular document. The Status (7) column displays each individual document's status (such as Accepted, Sent, or Paid), or how far along they are in the e-invoicing process. Please keep reading this guide to learn more about the various document statuses available.
You can also see more details about your document status in the Status Message column. This is not enabled by default in the Document Manager app, so here is how you can make it visible. Click on the Customize View button (4, above), then choose the option Status Message in the side panel that opens.
After this, a new Status Message column will be displayed in the Document Manager app, as shown below:
This column includes comments left by the Unilever Accounts Payable team regarding the document or transaction to ensure transparency in the e-invoicing process. If a document's status changes, the comments will indicate the reason for the change, and the next actions that are needed from you, as a Supply Partner. Please see below for some example status messages left on documents that were marked rejected.
All the functionalities of the Document Manager app are explained in more detail in this section.
You can open each individual document by clicking the blue document ID in the list. This will show you more information about the document:
You can easily see the document's status as set by Unilever, as it is indicated in two places: above (1) and on the document itself (2). Note that when looking up invoices in this portal, Only Summary invoice information is passed by Unilever to the Tradeshift platform.
Here are some of the document statuses that you will encounter on the platform:
- Sent
- Accepted
- Marked Paid
- Rejected
Click here to learn more about what each document status means.
You have the possibility to easily retrieve any comments and recent actions that were done on this document by clicking the "Open Collaboration" button (1):
This will open the Collaboration panel for this document (2). In it, you can view the latest comments regarding this document (3), as well as the date for when this comment or action was added.
Note that you can also contact the Unilever Accounts Payable Service Desk team via Collaboration, for example to enquire about a document's status. See how to do so here.
Remittance advices can be opened just like invoices, but the information on display is different:
From the document itself, you can easily see the remittance advice number (1), the invoice numbers which relate to this remittance advice (2), and any notes or payment details that were used underneath the above sections.