It is one of the most complex items in the administration of companies – and yet there is no way around it: We are talking about invoice matching (also known as purchase order matching). Each invoice that is sent to your company must be assigned to the associated order and checked for accuracy before the amount due is paid. There is no other way to authenticate the completion of the purchase process.

Traditionally, this process had to be performed manually by a company’s accounting department. The result: An extremely monotonous process that eats up a lot of working time. And since the working hours that your employees have to spend on this also mean a financial expense, this also represents an enormous cost factor in the overall operation of your company.

There are several steps involved in invoice reconciliation:

• Identification
  The corresponding invoice and order must be combined using the order numbers.
• Goods inspection
  The goods listed in the order must be matched with the goods invoiced. In addition to the actual description of the goods, this also includes variables such as the delivery quantity, the serial number, the product variant, the size, the material, the color or similar factors.
• Cost reconciliation
  The invoiced costs must be checked for correctness not only for each individual item, but also in the total amount added up.
• Authorization
  If the invoice has proven to be correct, the transfer of the amount due must be initiated. However, since the employees responsible for the invoice verification in the company are usually not authorized to authorize the invoice and instruct payment on their own, an additional step is required here. The verified invoice must be presented to the relevant decision-maker in the company for signature. The transfer of the amount can only be initiated after the authorized person has inspected it.

There is no changing the sequence of these steps. However, intelligent and user-friendly software such as FELLOWPRO can help you make this testing process much more efficient, significantly reduce the time required and eliminate unnecessary intermediate steps.