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Integrating Coupa with Other Systems

Revised: 20 May 2020

Overview

Coupa's flexibility allows it to be used for many different integration configurations. Often, master data sent from an ERP system can be sent to maintain similar data in Coupa, replacing the need for manual maintenance of data in Coupa. Examples include general ledger account codes, information about suppliers, and users (from ERP and/or Active Directory). Alternatively, this data could be maintained in Coupa and sent via integration to other internal systems.

Coupa also supports sending/receiving transactional data. Examples include requisitions, purchase orders, invoices, approved invoices (OK to pay), and receipts.

These examples of "master data" and "transactional data" are covered in more detail below.

Master Data

There are several master data integrations, including:

Integration Type	Description
Accounts from the ERP to Coupa	In most cases, customers wish to load their existing general ledger accounts to Coupa. Information from the ERP system can be combined or transformed to generate these fields: Account Name, Account Code, and name of Chart of Accounts to load to Coupa. The main pain point of this integration can be the volume of data, so it is best if delta (change) files are sent. If the customer cannot provide delta files, there are some methods to generate these within the integration, but they may introduce additional risk or cost.
Suppliers from the ERP to Coupa	Customers often want to maintain their supplier records within their system that actually cuts checks to or pays suppliers. This data is extracted, transformed and loaded to Coupa. Transformation of this data is usually required as Coupa has a restriction that both the Supplier Number and the Supplier Name are unique. Additionally, suppliers are shared across the Chart of Accounts in Coupa. These requirements may make it necessary to append additional information, such as the supplier site, #, or chart of accounts to the Supplier Name to ensure uniqueness.
Suppliers from Coupa to the ERP	Suppliers may also be managed and maintained in Coupa. A feed is then sent on a regular scheduled basis to a customer's system. These may include a link back (such as an ERP's ID number for the supplier) to facilitate supplier updates or other integrations.
Users to Coupa from the ERP	Even when using SSO systems, a feed will need to be maintained to manage users in Coupa. This feed often creates and populates certain fields within Coupa, but leaves others to be maintained in Coupa. This allows users to be setup or deactivated via an external system (like Active Directory or another ERP) but have their permissions or roles maintained within Coupa.

Transactional Data

There are several common transactional data integrations including:

Integration Type	Description
Purchase orders from Coupa to the ERP	This is the most common integration. Once Purchase Orders are created and approved in Coupa, they are extracted and sent to the customer's ERP system. Depending on the customer's requirements for PO revisions, changes, or cancelations, this may require multiple processes.
Invoices from Coupa to the ERP	Invoices are created in Coupa via the Coupa Supplier Network, cXML, or Manual Entry. Once approved, they are sent to the customer's ERP system, matched, and then paid.
Invoices from the ERP to Coupa	Invoices are created in the customer's system and then sent to Coupa for reporting, budgets, etc. This is relevant to P2O customers who process purchase orders in Coupa and look to tie back associated invoices that originate in ERP systems. 3rd party invoice data that falls outside spend categories managed in Coupa core platform should be loaded into our seperate AI Classification engine or customer's BI tools for spend analysis.
Payments from the ERP to Coupa	Payments are applied to invoices that exist in Coupa. Single checks can be split across multiple invoices and multiple checks can be applied to a single invoice.
Receipts from Coupa to the ERP	Receipts are created in Coupa and sent to the customer's ERP system for matching, reporting, or financial close reasons. Unlike some systems, each receipt in Coupa is a single line. If multiple lines are received at the same time, each line gets its own inventory transaction record in Coupa.