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Look up vendor details from your ERP when an invoice arrives

Fill in vendor name, terms, and GL account from your accounting database the moment an invoice with a vendor number is filed — a Content Capture trigger and a Perform Field Lookup action — for documents that arrive already coded and never pass through a person's hands.

Catalog administratorsContent Central 7.8+15 minutesVerified 2026-09-05

Before you begin

  • A field lookup is defined on the document type (see Look up field values from another system)
  • Documents arrive with the lookup's key field already filled (XML capture job, capture form, or AI extraction)

When you're done, an invoice filed with a vendor number gets its vendor name, payment terms, and default GL account filled in from your accounting database automatically — the same lookup a person would trigger in the Coding Queue, run by workflow instead.

The planDocument type scope
  1. Trigger
    1. Content Capture › Content Captured in this Document TypeField Evaluation: Selected Field Has Value · Field: Vendor Number
  2. Action
    1. Content - Perform Field LookupField Lookup: your vendor lookup definition
  3. Rule
    1. "Invoice with vendor number filed → look up vendor", enabled

When you need this

A field lookup normally fires while someone codes a document: they type the vendor number, the other fields fill in. Documents that skip the Coding Queue — XML capture jobs from another system, capture forms, AI-extracted invoices filed straight into the catalog — never get that moment. This rule gives it to them.

Build the trigger

  1. Go to Administration > Catalogs & Document Types, pick the Catalog and the invoice Document Type, click the Workflow tile, then Triggers > New Trigger.

  1. Type: Content Capture and Content Captured in this Document Type. Trigger Name: Filed with a vendor number.

  1. Field Evaluation: Selected Field Has Value. Field: the vendor number field. A lookup with an empty key does nothing useful, so don't fire it.

  1. Click Save.

Build the action

  1. Click Actions > New Action. Type: Content - Perform Field Lookup. Action Name: Look up vendor from ERP.

  1. Choose the lookup definition under Field Lookup:. If the list reads There are no field lookups in this Document Type., define one first — Look up field values from another system walks through the data source, the table, and the field mappings.

  1. Click Save.

Wire the rule

  1. Click Rules > New Rule. Rule Name: Invoice with vendor number filed → look up vendor.

  1. Add Trigger: Filed with a vendor number. Add Action: Look up vendor from ERP. Apply.

Test it

  1. File one invoice with a valid vendor number and nothing else, by the route your documents really take (an XML capture job, say).

  1. Open its properties.

What you should see: the mapped fields (vendor name, terms, GL account) now filled from the database, and the rule in View History. If they're still blank, test the lookup by hand on the same document in the Coding Queue — if that also fails, the problem is the lookup definition or the connection, not the workflow.

Important

A lookup that runs after a person coded the document will overwrite what they typed with the database's values. Fire it on capture (this recipe) or on the key field changing (Variations), not on every edit.

Variations

Want this insteadChange this
Re-run the lookup when someone changes the vendor number laterTrigger Content Field Values › Field Value Updated in this Document Type on the vendor number field, same action
Look up while the document is still in the Coding QueueTrigger Coding-Queue Arrival › Arrival in this Document Type, action Coding Queue - Perform Field Lookup
Flag invoices whose vendor number isn't foundAdd a second rule: Content Capture with Selected Field Lacks Value on the vendor name field, running after this one, that assigns to a corrections work queue
Fill fields from another document type's values instead of a databaseAction Content - Update Shared Fields by Key Field
Refresh cached lookup values on a scheduleAction Content - Update Field Lookup on a scheduled Content Query trigger