Ask a vendor for a missing document

A bill missing its purchase order or goods receipt waits until someone gets the document from the vendor. The vendor has it, so Vestiarion can ask them for it, through a one-time link that sends it straight to the bill, without an account. It works the same in a workspace on Arc testnet and on Arc mainnet.

It is for a bill the agent sent back because its purchase order or goods receipt is missing: see Approve a held payment for adding the details yourself. Nothing here pays a bill: a person approves every payment whose purchase order came from a vendor's document.

Watch it#

Under a minute: vendor requests turned on, and a bill whose vendor sent its document, checked by Vestiarion and waiting for a person.

1.Turn on vendor requests#

An owner turns it on in Settings, under Ask vendors for missing documents, beside the payee lock. There are three settings: Off, as every workspace starts, Shadow and On. Each change is recorded as document_requests_changed.

• Shadow. Nothing is sent. Each waiting bill's card, on Approvals and on Bills & receivables, says what would be asked while the bill still lacks it, such as "Vestiarion would ask Northstar Studio for the purchase order. Turn on vendor requests in Settings to send it." The ledger records document_request_drafted once per bill, with the billing email's domain and never the address.
• On. At the end of each cycle, Vestiarion emails the vendor's Billing email in your workspace's name. The email gives their own invoice number, its amount and due date, what is missing, and the link. The card says, for example, "Asked Northstar Studio for the purchase order on Oct 23; the link expires Nov 6." The ledger records document_requested.
• Which bills. A bill waiting for information, missing its purchase order or goods receipt, whose counterparty has a billing email and is neither frozen nor screened high risk. A counterparty paid without purchase orders is only ever asked for the goods receipt.
• In a sandbox. Vestiarion never emails a sandbox's vendors. The email goes to the member who turned vendor requests on, its subject starting with [Sandbox], so you can open the link and send a document as the vendor would.
• How often. Each bill has one request at a time. It is asked again only 7 days after its request was answered or expired, and never after a revoke. A workspace makes at most 20 requests a day, and the documents your team attaches do not count toward them. An email that fails is tried again at the next cycle, three times at most.

2.The vendor sends the document#

The vendor opens the link without an account. The page names your workspace, their invoice, its amount and due date, and what is missing. They choose one PDF, PNG or JPEG of up to 10 MB, known by its first bytes rather than its name, may type the purchase order number and add a note, and choose Send the document. The link takes one document, for 14 days. The ledger records document_received, with the file's SHA-256, kind and size, and the owners and admins get an email. The email says whether they typed a purchase order number; the number itself is on the card.

The card then says, for example, "Northstar Studio sent a document on Oct 24." It shows the purchase order number and note they typed, and a button that opens the file for any member, such as Open the PDF. Vestiarion then checks the document against the bill: see Vestiarion checks the document below. Where it does not add the purchase order, Add details comes with the one they typed filled in: check it against the document, then add it. The agent decides the bill again, as after any Add details. If the vendor is asked again later, what they sent stays on the card under the new request.

• Nothing is paid because a document arrived. The request and the vendor's page never change the bill. Only a check that matches adds the purchase order, and a person approves the payment. Nothing changes the bill's status, amount or address, and no money moves.
• Revoke. While a request is open, owners and admins can choose Revoke on the card. The link stops working at once, the vendor is not asked about that bill again, and it is recorded as document_request_revoked.
• Where the file is kept. In your workspace's private storage, never shown on Vestiarion's pages: a member's button downloads it through an address that works for a minute. Deleting the workspace deletes the files, as does the cleanup of an idle sandbox, and removing the sample data deletes those of its sample vendors. See Privacy.
• Before the update. Until the workspace's database has the setting, the section says "Not available in this workspace yet."

3.Vestiarion checks the document#

While vendor requests are in Shadow or On, each document a vendor sends, or a member attaches, is checked against its bill within a minute, at the next cycle. The workspace's model reads a PDF's text and never sees the bill. Code then compares the vendor's name, the currency, the amount to its last decimal, the purchase order and any address the document asks to be paid to. Until it is checked, the card says "Vestiarion checks it against the bill at its next cycle, usually within a minute." The ledger records each check once as document_checked, with the file's SHA-256 and the values compared, never the document's text.

• When they match. With vendor requests On, a bill missing its purchase order gets the one the document names, spelled as the document writes it, and nothing else changes. For Northstar Studio's 8.00 USDC bill and its purchase order PO-2215, the card says "Vendor, amount and purchase order PO-2215 match the bill. Vestiarion added the purchase order and checked the bill again. A person approves the payment: the agent does not pay it on its own."
• A person approves it, always. The agent never pays or schedules a bill whose purchase order came from a document. It decides the bill again and holds it on Approvals for a person, and Approve and pay pays it with all of its usual checks. On Bills & receivables, its card names the rule under "Blocked by code, not by the model": "Its purchase order came from a vendor's document, which a person approves".
• When they do not match. The bill keeps waiting, and the card gives the first thing that did not match, such as "The document says 8.50 USDC; the bill says 8.00 USDC. The bill still waits: check it with Northstar Studio, or add the details yourself." The vendor is not told, and is not asked again outside the 7 days.
• When the reader flags it. The model notes anything in the document that needs a person, such as figures that do not add up, a changed address or text that gives it instructions, and a document it noted never matches. The card gives the first check that did not match, or "The reader flagged something in it for a person to check.", and beneath it, in italics, what the reader saw, in quotation marks and named as the reader's: for example, The reader noted: "The bank account on this invoice differs from the one on the purchase order." It is the model's reading of the vendor's document, never Vestiarion's own words, so check it against the document before you act on it. In it, a link reads "(link removed)", whether it starts with https:// or www., is a Markdown link, or is only a web address such as pay.example.com/invoice, including one written with fullwidth or ideographic dots, or in another script; an email address reads "(email address removed)" and a long code such as a token "(token removed)". It is at most 200 characters, and document_checked records it as readerNote. When the line would name long purchase orders, it says the same without them, so the note always fits beneath it; the decision trail still names them.
• The goods receipt. The check never marks goods received: only your team knows what arrived. A bill that still waits for its goods says "Only your team can mark the goods received: do it in Add details once you have them, and a person then approves the payment."
• What it cannot read. A PNG or JPEG, a scan with no text, or a PDF over 4 MB is never read by a model. The card says why, for example "It is an image. Only a PDF with its text is checked.", and you add the details yourself. A PDF of more than 50 pages, one Vestiarion cannot read within 15 seconds, one built to expand to more than 16 MB once decompressed, or a password-protected one, is not checked either: the card says "This PDF could not be read." If reading a document was stopped for a reason that may not be the document's, Vestiarion reads it again at the next cycle.
• In shadow. The document is read, compared and recorded, and the bill never changes. A match says "Vendor requests are in shadow, so the bill was left as it is: add the purchase order yourself."
• Attach a document. A vendor who emails you their purchase order gets the same check. Owners and admins choose Attach a document on the bill's card, on Approvals or on Bills & receivables, pick the PDF, up to 4 MB, and choose Attach and check. The card then says "A member attached Northstar Studio's document on Oct 25.", and the ledger records document_received with who attached it.
• Before the update. Until the workspace's database checks documents, a document is shown and not checked, Attach a document is not offered, and Settings says what it said before.

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