Invoice Validation & Review

Validate invoices in UMS, review flagged review items, detect billing gaps and missing invoices, and triage supplier emails from the validation inbox.

The Invoice Validation module provides a complete workflow for validating invoices, reviewing flagged items, detecting billing gaps, managing inbox emails, and excluding problematic entries.

Validation dashboard

Navigate to Validation from the sidebar.

The dashboard provides an at-a-glance view of:

• Summary Stats — Total Validations, Passed, Failed, and For Review counts
• Overall Pass Rate — Percentage of invoices passing all checks
• Common Errors — Most frequent validation failures (last 30 days)
• Supplier Performance — How suppliers compare on validation quality
• Invoice Quality — Gap detection results (Total Gaps, Open, Acknowledged, Resolved)

Running validation on an invoice

1. Open an invoice

   Open an invoice detail page.

2. Start validation

   Click the Validate button in the header.

3. The engine runs its checks

   The validation engine checks:

   • Amount accuracy — Do line item totals match the invoice total?
   • Date consistency — Are billing periods correct and non-overlapping?
   • Connection matching — Are charges linked to valid connections?
   • Rate verification — Do rates match the expected tariff?
   • Duplicate detection — Is this invoice a duplicate of an existing one?
4. Review the results

   Results appear in the invoice’s Validation tab and the module’s Validation Results tab.

Validation results

Each row represents a validated invoice showing:

• Status — PASSED, FAILED, or FOR_REVIEW
• Current Charges and Tax amounts
• Confidence Score — System confidence in the result (0-1 scale)
• Error Source — What caused the failure (for example, TARIFF_MISMATCH, QUANTITY_CALCULATION)

Completing a review

1. Find items needing attention

   Find invoices with status FOR_REVIEW or FAILED.

2. Open the validation detail

   Click See Details to open the validation detail.

3. Review the variance breakdown

   Review the variance breakdown showing where charges diverge from expected tariff rates.

4. Check the AI analysis

   Check the AI Analysis section for automated insights and recommendations.

5. Take action

   • Approve — Mark as reviewed and accept the charges.
   • Reject — Flag for further investigation.
   • Edit — Open the source invoice to correct line items.

Review items

The Review Items tab consolidates all issues across the validation pipeline.

Each item shows:

• Issue Type — VALIDATION_FAILURE, DATA_QUALITY, DUPLICATE_INVOICE, GAP, SUGGESTION
• Severity — CRITICAL, HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW, INFO
• Status — OPEN, ACKNOWLEDGED, IN_PROGRESS, RESOLVED, DISMISSED
• Title — Human-readable summary of the issue
• Variance — Dollar amount and percentage difference detected
• Recommendations — Suggested actions to resolve

Working through review items

1. Filter by severity

   Filter by severity — start with CRITICAL and HIGH.

2. Open a review item

   Click into a review item for full details.

3. Review the description and recommendations

   Review the description and recommendations.

4. Take action

   • Acknowledge — You have seen it, but it needs further work.
   • Resolve — Mark as fixed with resolution notes and action taken.
   • Dismiss — Not a real issue; dismiss with a reason.
   • Assign — Delegate to another team member with a due date.

Invoice gap detection

Invoice gaps are periods where an expected invoice is missing.

Triggering gap detection

1. Open the Validation Dashboard

   Navigate to the Validation Dashboard.

2. Trigger gap detection

   Click Trigger Gap Detection at the bottom of the Invoice Quality section.

3. The system analyses connections

   The system analyses all connections and identifies missing billing periods.

4. Review the results

   Results appear in the Invoice Gaps tab.

Each gap shows the retail account, connection, expected period, number of gap days, billing frequency, and status:

• Open — Not yet addressed
• Acknowledged — Noted but awaiting supplier response
• Resolved — Invoice received or gap explained

Inbox review

The Inbox Review tab manages email-sourced invoices within the validation workflow.

Filtering inbox items

The data grid shows inbox items with columns for Date Added, Subject, Has Attachments, Sender, Recipient, Read status, Email Type, Status, and Account Name. By default, only items matching the active status filters are shown — click Clear, then Apply Filters, to see all items regardless of status.

The Inbox Review provides filtering by:

• Root Account / Account — Narrow to specific accounts.
• Search — Find by sender or email subject.
• Date Range — Filter by received date.
• Status chips:
  • Received — New, unprocessed emails
  • Processing — Currently being processed by UtiliRead
  • Success — Successfully processed into invoices
  • Errors — Processed with some errors
  • No Match — Could not match to an account or connection
  • Failed — Processing failed completely
  • Archived — Manually archived
  • Excluded — Deliberately excluded from processing
  • Duplicate — Detected as a duplicate
• Type chips — Invoice, Data File, Overdue Notice, Rate Change Notice, Payment Receipt, and so on.

Reviewing an inbox item

Click any row in the grid to open the detail panel on the right side.

The detail panel shows:

• Subject and status badges — The email subject with status (for example, NO_DATA_MATCH) and type (for example, INVOICE) badges
• Processing Note — Any notes from automated processing (for example, “No valid attachments found in email”)
• Email Details — From address, To address, received date, and email type, with an edit button to reclassify
• Generated Invoices — Any invoices created from this email. Shows count and links to the invoice detail pages
• Email Content — Expandable section to view the full email body
• Timestamps — When the email was received and processed

The action buttons in the top-right of the detail panel let you:

• Refresh — Reprocess the email.
• Exclude — Mark the item as excluded from processing.
• Process — Send to UtiliRead for OCR processing.
• Close — Close the detail panel.

Processing an inbox email

1. Open the detail panel

   Click the email row to open the detail panel.

2. Review the email

   Review the email details and content.

3. Send to UtiliRead

   Click the Process button (cloud icon) to send the attachment to UtiliRead (OCR).

4. The system extracts the data

   The system extracts invoice data, identifies the supplier and account, creates an invoice record, and links it to the correct connection.

5. Confirm the generated invoice

   The Generated Invoices section updates with a link to the new invoice.

6. Continue through the pipeline

   The processed invoice then flows through the validation pipeline.

Excluding invoices

To exclude an inbox item from processing:

1. Open the detail panel

   Click the item to open the detail panel.

2. Exclude the item

   Click the Exclude button (circle with line icon) in the top-right action buttons.

3. Confirm the new status

   The status changes to Excluded and the item will no longer be processed.

4. Find excluded items later

   Excluded items remain visible when the Excluded filter chip is active.

Use exclusion for:

• Duplicate emails that should not create new invoices
• Non-invoice communications (account notices, marketing)
• Items already processed through another channel
• Test or spam emails