The SAP system is made up of several components linked together so that different departments within a company can cooperate with one another.

The Invoice Verification component is part of the Materials Management (MM) system. It provides the link between the Materials Management component and the Financial Accounting, Controlling, and Asset Accounting components.

Invoice Verification in Materials Management serves the following purposes:

• It completes the materials procurement process - which starts with the purchase requisition, continues with purchasing and goods receipt and ends with the invoice receipt
• It allows invoices that do not originate in materials procurement (for example, services, expenses, course costs, etc.) to be processed
• It allows credit memos to be processed, either as invoice cancellations or discounts

Invoice Verification does not handle the payment or the analysis of invoices. The information required for these processes is passed on to other departments.

Invoice Verification tasks include:

• Entering invoices and credit memos that have been received
• Checking the accuracy of invoices with respect to contents, prices, and arithmetic
• Executing the account postings resulting from an invoice
• Updating certain data in the SAP system, for example, open items and material prices
• Checking invoices that were blocked because they varied too greatly from the purchase order

The high degree of integration in the SAP system allows these tasks to be carried out smoothly and efficiently.