If you are a user within a Parent Account and spend time sorting individual documents into the relevant Child Accounts manually, or through auto-forwarding within your Email Inbox, this feature may be of use to you.

If you're familiar with our Keyword Automation Rules, we have the ability to scan over any document within the Approvals tab and automatically code the Chart of Accounts, Categories and Approver based off a word or phrase found, e.g., if a postcode or city is found on the document, you can tell us how to automatically code it.

Redirect Automation works similarly to this!

Email or Upload a document to your Parent Account, we'll scan over it for a word or phrase you've specified, and it'll automatically transfer to the relevant Child Account. For example, if you have a Child Account that handles all bills for a London subsidiary, you can enter London and all documents containing the word London will move to this Child Account.

Log into your Parent Account and go to Company Settings, scroll down until you see the setting for Redirect Automation.

Set this to Yes and we'll give the option to Add Rule.

Here you can add a word, phrase or multiple words and phrases for Lightyear to look for in order for the Redirect to kick in. Simply click the Rule field and start typing.

When you've entered the information, you can click Enter or type a comma on your keyboard, or click the + button to the right of the field to confirm your selection. You can add as many options in here as you want.

You can then select a Lightyear Account from the dropdown. This will list all the Child Accounts, and the current Parent Account, under the Parent Account you're currently logged into.

As you move down the list and add more Rules, you'll notice you won't be able to select a Lightyear Account more than once. If you want to add additional rules to an Account, select that row and start typing more Rules.

When adding rules, be careful of the order you're adding them to. If you receive documents that contain multiple rules, e.g., one invoice has the words London and Sydney on them, but these are set up to go to two different Lightyear accounts, it will reroute to the first rule it matches. To change this, use the blue arrows to the left of the Rules to reorder them.

For simplicity, I'm going to use the example of four Lightyear accounts, looking for rules based off the cities my documents may be sent to - Belfast, London and Sydney, and a final rule for my Parent Account.

Before you upload your first document, ensure you've covered all bases for the Redirect Automation Rules, e.g., one Supplier may say UK, another may say United Kingdom, another GB, etc. Ensure you have all these set up as a Rule if you were to redirect into a UK based Child Account.

Once you're all set, as you normally would, upload all your documents to the Parent Account. They will land in processing and begin to extract as normal.

Once the extraction is complete and we have read the details on the document, you may notice they start to disappear one by one.

Check the relevant child account set up with a Redirect Automation Rule, and you'll see it in one of two places.

First, if you don't have a Supplier created or a Map to use, check in Processing. Here it will be suggesting a Map if one exists, or waiting for a Supplier to be selected in Smart Extract, if you have the Auto Smart Extract setting enabled.

Secondly, it may be in Approvals, if there is a Supplier set up and you've previously mapped or Smart Extracted it before.

In this example, I've left it in Processing for simplicity.

You can check the Activity History to see all previous actions taken on the document, and the record of it redirecting into with the message:

Document routed successfully : Routed to company because of matches on:

From here, you can do as you would normally do and search for and apply a Map, or use Smart Extract to move it through to Approvals.

Let's say you have a scenario where your Parent Account uses Purchase Orders or Expenses, but the Child Account doesn't. What would happen if we try to redirect a document where a certain feature isn't enabled?

Simple. We won't move it, and it will stay in the Parent Account.

Here I have uploaded a document as a Purchase Order to my Parent Account. On the document there is the word London, meaning it should redirect to my releasenoteslondon Lightyear account, but this account doesn't have Purchase Orders enabled.

The PO stays in the Parent Account, and has a message of

Document could not be routed : Could not route to company [company name] because it does not support processing of [purchase orders/expenses]. This company was selected because of matches on:

•[Name of Rule matched]

This clearly lets you know where it was supposed to go with the rule matched, and the reason why it didn't redirect.

You may see an increased number of documents in your Parent Account that are flagged as Manual Entry.

We will flag this as Manual Entry to prevent it from going in a loop of Extracting Data to find a Rule Match > Failing to Redirect to a Child Account > Land in Parent Account > Extracting Data to find a Rule Match. Going to Manual Entry is a way to mitigate this loop.

Defaulting to Manual Entry could happen for a number of reasons, but it's important you check the Activity log to see the reason as it may be because of a Redirect Rule, or it could be a valid issue where the document has been flagged as Manual Entry. If there is a different or missing error message than those below, please reach out to our Support Team for further help.

One reason is because of the above flow where we're trying to redirect a document to a company that has a feature disabled, e.g., Purchase Orders or Expenses.

This will be displayed with the error:

Document could not be routed : Could not route to company [company name] because it does not support processing of [purchase orders/expenses]. This company was selected because of matches on:

•[Name of Rule matched]

Another reason is because we didn't find a match for a Rule, so we don't know where to redirect it to. For example, you may have the rules set up for Belfast, London and Sydney, but if you get a document received that says Adelaide on it, we won't know where to send it, so it remains in the Parent account.

This will be displayed with the error:

Document could not be routed : No match found

It's important you cover all bases when setting up Redirect Rules, it may take a couple times to get it right as you start to receive documents from your Suppliers and see a variety of combinations of words/phrases used, but over time you should see the number of Manual Entry documents reduce.

Just because a document has been flagged as Manual Entry, especially in the cases above, it doesn't mean you're stuck having to Manually Enter it.

If you go to the document in Processing, click More > Switch Extraction Method > and select one of the options.