Invoice matching
Matching the invoice to the order and the goods received
Three documents describe the same purchase: what was ordered, what arrived, and what you are being asked to pay. When one of them disagrees with the other two, that is precisely the moment a business loses money without knowing it.
Two numbers, one supplier
The purchase order to the supplier said one amount. The invoice from that same supplier asked for another. Without a system, nobody puts the two side by side, and what the invoice says is what gets paid.
This is not a rare fault. It is the default of work split between a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group and an email folder.
What the system compares
- What was ordered: the purchase order and the price list it was built from
- What was received: the goods receipt, marked off from a phone at the receiving door
- What is being claimed: the invoice that arrived from the supplier
Whatever does not match between the three stops and waits for a decision. The owner sees it as something requiring attention, not as a line in a report somebody may read.
Why it stops before payment and not after
Payment always goes through an approved request. There is no emergency route around the approval, and no permission that allows an unchecked invoice to be paid. A mismatch discovered after the transfer is no longer a decision, it is a correspondence.
Goods receipt from a phone
The goods receipt flow was designed for mobile first, because that is where it happens. What is missing gets marked at the receiving door rather than a week later, and without that marking the comparison runs on a figure nobody checked.
This is the point at which it is easy to give up. You can assume that what was ordered is what arrived, and then compare two documents instead of three. That assumption is almost always right, and the loss sits precisely in the cases where it is not.
Who decides on a mismatch
Not every mismatch is an error. Sometimes the price rose by agreement, sometimes a different quantity arrived by arrangement, and sometimes the supplier is right. The system does not decide for anyone; it puts the gap in front of whoever is authorised to decide, and keeps the decision.
What it does prevent is a route around it. Payment always goes through an approved request, and no permission allows the approval to be skipped. The separation between whoever approves and whoever transfers holds even when it is urgent.
Why three documents and not two
| What is compared | What it catches |
|---|---|
| Order against invoice | A price that moved, an item never ordered, a duplicate |
| Order against receipt | What never arrived, what arrived in part, what arrived damaged |
| Receipt against invoice | Payment for goods that were never actually received |
Two of the three comparisons catch most cases. Three also catch the one that costs the most money: paying in full for a partial delivery.
Start with one supplier, and watch the chain work on your own business.
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