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Manage purchase order prefixes

Coupa can be connected to multiple ERP systems simultaneously. To avoid overlapping purchase order numbers, some Coupa users add prefixes to the purchase orders within Coupa. Typically, the prefix reflects the ERP system of origin. For example, PO numbers from SAP could be prefixed with "SAP". Although PO prefixes are a great tool inside Coupa, they can potentially cause problems during extraction in AP Essentials because the PO on an original document cannot be automatically matched with the imported purchase order. To overcome this issue, you can specify purchase order prefix templates in AP Essentials. This feature removes the PO prefixes during master data import, allowing POs to be matched correctly, and later adds the PO prefixes back to the document during export to Coupa.

You can apply PO prefix templates at the customer account level and to specific buyers.

This topic refers to the Coupa AP integration, which is the most current version of the Coupa integration and uses the latest version of the Coupa API.

To specify prefixes for purchase order numbers:

  1. In Admin Center, navigate to the Target system view and click EDIT.
  2. Select Coupa AP and click Configuration.

    The target system settings appear.

  3. Select Use PO prefix templates.
  4. Specify your PO prefix templates in the box that appears. Separate multiple templates a semicolon.

    You specify a prefix template using the pattern: prefix:po_number_regex. Where prefix is a literal string and po_number_regex is a regular expression that matches the beginning of the PO number. See examples below.

  5. Optionally, click Buyer-specific settings to define templates on the buyer level.
  6. Click OK to confirm your settings and return to the Target system view.
  7. Click SAVE.

PO prefix templates examples

You specify a prefix template using the pattern: prefix:po_number_regex. Where prefix is a literal string and po_number_regex is a regular expression that matches the beginning of the PO number. Separate multiple templates a semicolon

For example, assume your Coupa system is integrated with SAP and Oracle Financials Cloud. In Coupa, you prefix the SAP purchase order numbers with "SAP_", and the SAP PO numbers are at least six digits long. The Oracle PO numbers are prefixed with "OFC_" and contain at least 7 digits. To create PO prefix templates for this scenario, you would specify the following in the PO prefix templates setting:

SAP_: \d{6};OFC_:\d{7}

You can specify more than one template per organization (customer or buyer). For example, continue the example above, but assume you use two prefixes for SAP, one with an underscore and one with a dash. In this case you could make an additional template to handle the extra prefix:

SAP_: \d{6};SAP-: \d{6};OFC_:\d{7}

Examples

Incoming PO number from master data PO number used in AP Essentials PO number exported to Coupa
SAP_123456 123456 SAP_123456
OFC_1234567 1234567 OFC_1234567
SAP-482349 482349 SAP-482349
SAP_8675309 8675309 SAP_8675309

Note the last example in the previous table. Although the regular expression specifies only six digits, seven digits were captured. The regular expression only needs to match the beginning of the purchase order number. Any characters found after the specification are also captured.