Co-author – Srihari Ananda Kumar
Coupa is a cloud-based software for Business Spend Management (BSM) that allows you to manage and analyze your employees' spending, from procurement to invoicing and expenses. Coupa co-creates new and unique capabilities that provide clear visibility, actionable insights, and spending management solutions to customers, partners, and suppliers.
Building a flow in IBM App Connect with Coupa
Use App Connect to build flows that integrate with Coupa and other applications. The connector is displayed as Coupa on the App Connect User Interface (UI).
To allow App Connect to connect to your Coupa account, you need to fill in the connection fields that you see in the App Connect Designer Catalog page or flow editor.
For more information on connection fields, see How to use App Connect with Coupa.
The Coupa endpoint is deprecating API KEY based authentication and migrating to OAuth 2.0 authentication in Release 35 (January 2023). All Coupa Administrators must transition their API integrations to authenticate with Coupa using OAuth 2.0 as soon as possible. See, API Key Deprecation FAQ.
You must perform some tasks in App Connect after migrating to OAuth 2.0 authentication. For more information, see the section Connecting to Coupa on the How to use App Connect with Coupa documentation.
Coupa objects
The following are the Coupa objects that can be run in App Connect.
Objects
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Description
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Addresses
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The personal or supplier remit-to address information.
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Exchange rates
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The exchange rates for currencies that the company uses to pay for the goods.
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Exchange reports
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The reports that describe business expenses in Coupa.
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Inventory transactions
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The inventory transactions or receipts in Coupa.
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Invoices
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An invoice is sent for an approved purchase order from the supplier to the customer. It is an itemized commercial document that records the products or services that are delivered to the customer, the total amount due, and the preferred payment method.
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Lookup values
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The lookup values, which are used to create a hierarchy of accounts.
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Purchase orders
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A purchase order (PO) is sent to suppliers for the items that have been ordered or requested.
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Remit-to addresses
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The addresses that are used to send payments to suppliers.
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Suppliers
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The suppliers of goods in Coupa.
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Users
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The registered users of Coupa.
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Scenario 1: Create a supplier and invoice in Coupa for each purchase order retrieved from IBM Maximo
Consider this scenario where a supplier and invoice are created in Coupa for each purchase order (PO) retrieved from IBM Maximo. A Slack message is then sent to the intended channel with the supplier and invoice details.
In this flow:
- You run a scheduler-based flow that retrieves purchase orders (POs) from IBM Maximo.
- A Set variable node is added to the flow to set the variable millis (milliseconds) to the current event time.
- The IBM Maximo Retrieve purchase orders operation fetches the purchase orders from IBM Maximo for orders dated greater than or equal to the current date.
- For each purchase order retrieved from IBM Maximo:
- A supplier is created in Coupa with the supplier information, such as vendor name and PO details, based on the purchase order retrieved.
- An invoice is created in Coupa for the specific purchase order with the PO number and invoice date.
- A Slack message gets sent to the intended channel with the supplier and invoice details.
Try out our templates
You can view the following use cases in the Templates gallery in your App Connect Designer instance.
- Create a supplier and invoice in Coupa for each purchase order retrieved from IBM Maximo
Template URL: https://<your-instance-id>/templates/ Create%20a%20supplier%20and%20invoice%20in%20Coupa%20for%20each%20purchase%20order%20retrieved%20from%20IBM%20Maximo
You must enable the Designer AI features in your containerized environment in order to access the App Connect templates. For more information, see The preloaded IBM App Connect templates.
You can also import these use cases directly into your App Connect Designer. These templates are added to a public GitHub repository at https://github.com/ot4i/app-connect-templates/tree/cp4i-templates/resources.