Dear client

18 October

​Hi [redacted]

Progressing payment of our invoice, first sent on 3 August of this year following completion of this phase of work.

We [the two owners of the business] spent a significant amount of time on this, again, this evening. I might be a person of below average intelligence, but [redacted] is not. I recall that for the first invoice I had to watch several induction videos and read a long pdf. Then in the end, [redacted-former client finance lead] talked me through it in a 20-minute phonecall.

The second invoice was somehow miraculously processed without the intervention of SAP Ariba.

This time, we finally found under the ‘workbench’ heading (if I recall correctly), something called a ‘service sheet’.

We then patiently copied what details from our invoice seemed relevant into ‘create invoice’ against the ‘service sheet’, as our previously ‘created’ invoices did not seem available to allocate.

We were initially unable to submit as the invoice number (naturally) duplicated the one that [redacted] had managed to upload previously – so I simply extended the name of the ‘new’ invoice with a written explanation of why we were having to do it again.

In this process, we receive​d three emails​.

​The first, from​ [REDACTED] SAP Ariba <no-reply@[redacted].ariba.com>​, which we opened despite the name looking like a typical phishing attack, said said ‘For your information – Notification: The user profile has been fully approved – UP[redacted]’

The second, from​ network_accounts@[redacted].ariba.com <ordersender-prod@[redacted].ariba.com>​ (note two different email addresses), said ‘Sent – Invoice INV-[redacted]weapparentlyneedtocreateaninvoiceagainstthe’servicesheet’eventhoughwecreateditalready – to [redacted] (ANID: [redacted] ) – Notification from SAP Business Network​ and claimed ‘Your customer [redacted] updated your invoice on SAP Business Network.’ ​(Which we know isn’t true, unless you were on the system at the same time as us?)

The third, from ordersender-prod@[redacted].ariba.com with the reply-to set to AribaNotes@ariba.com, said we had officially submitted an invoice. This included a human-readable pdf which we can upload to our finance system along with our actual invoice which we originally sent you and you uploaded to Ariba. Please note that on that pdf, the customer email address is still given as [redacted – former client finance lead].

​I trust this will do the trick, and leave you to make your own judgements about the accessibility of the payment process 😉

Thanks as always for your business.

Benjamin