Contact rules allow you to assign default behaviour for documents from recurring suppliers or customers, significantly reducing manual data entry whilst ensuring consistency. In other words, saving you from having to do the same thing over and over again.
Types of contact rules
You can set up two types of rules for each contact:
Supplier rules – For contacts who are your suppliers, these rules auto-fill purchase documents with predefined settings.
Customer rules – For contacts who are your customers, these rules auto-fill sales documents with the appropriate defaults.
If you expect both purchase and sales documents from a contact, you can set up both supplier and customer rules.
What can be automated by contact rules
Contact rules can automatically: assign default categories, due date calculations, currencies, tax rates, descriptions, and line item capture preferences.
If you have connected your accounting software, you can also configure:
Regions/locations
Classes and products/services (QuickBooks only)
Customer assignments
Automatic payment marking
Setting up contact rules
You can create contact rules in two ways:
From the document review by clicking Set customer/supplier rules whilst reviewing a document from that contact
Or from the contacts section by navigating to Contacts, selecting a contact, and going to the Customer/Supplier Rules tab.
Auto-publishing feature
You can enable auto-publishing for contacts with regular invoices that don't require manual review. Documents will automatically publish to your accounting software when all necessary information is extracted successfully, no duplicates are detected, and the document passes all validation checks.
Important: Apron doesn't filter supplier statements, so avoid auto-publishing for suppliers who send statements in order to prevent duplicate entries in your accounting software.
Best practices
Set up rules for your most frequent suppliers and customers first, as this provides immediate time savings.
Review and update rules periodically to ensure they remain accurate as your business relationships evolve, and use specific categories and descriptions to maintain clear audit trails in your accounting records.