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Automated Invoice
Matching Software
Businesses are turning to automation to streamline their invoice-matching process to save time and money. Manually sifting through all incoming invoices to match them with a purchase or sales order takes time and effort. Fortunately, there is a solution!
GoPayables automates the process of matching, validating, and entering your invoices into your ERP—no manual work is required. Our automated invoice matching software can quickly identify quantities, unit prices, payment conditions, and more—even if the page is unfamiliar. Our technology remembers vendors and deals as you use it more, so the next time they come across one, it’s faster than ever!
For any business, large or small, GoPayables will make managing finances more accessible than ever!
What does Invoice Matching mean?
Invoice matching is the process by which invoices are matched with supporting documentation, which includes existing vendor contracts, purchase orders, and notes of goods received, to ensure that the invoice is valid.
Two-Way Invoice Matching
Two-way invoice matching, or purchase order (PO) matching, compares specific figures on the PO and its corresponding invoice.
Two-way matching is a method used to reconcile non-tangible item purchases. In this instance, the term “non-tangible” refers to an item that does not have a physical form; hence, no receipt is created. It could include services or products such as legal services or software.
Procedure
- First, when you order something from a vendor, the purchase order has to be approved by your supervisor and then sent to the vendor for confirmation.
- If the vendor agrees and can deliver the product or service as requested, they send an invoice for payment.
- After that, you’ll match up your purchase order and invoice and send them off for approval.
- Once everything is approved, your payment will be processed and sent!
Three-Way Invoice Matching
Three-way matching is a method that determines whether an invoice is valid and prepared for payment by comparing what was ordered (the purchase order), what was delivered (the receipt), and the supplier’s invoice.
In the case of tangible products with a receipt available, a 3-way match procedure will be used.
Procedure
- You issue a purchase order to the vendor when ready to buy goods.
- The vendor ships the product.
- After you’ve received the product from your supplier, create an invoice in your accounting system—a “goods receipt note.”
- Then, when the vendor sends your company an invoice, you upload it into your system and match it against the purchase order and receipt.
- If all three documents match perfectly, then you can pay for the goods in the manner specified.
Differences between
2 way and 3 way invoice matching
The example below illustrates the critical difference between 2-way and 3-way matching.
A corporate events company has received a long-term contract and is adding 300 seats to its inventory. They negotiate with the supplier on price per seat, quantity required, setup times, and other details. The supplier will require that the buyer submit a purchase order. When the purchase order is received, the supplier will create an invoice based on it and provide it to the events company for payment. The events company performs a two-way matching process on invoices and purchase orders. If there are no discrepancies, the invoice is approved for payment at this stage.
In 3-way matching, the events firm would wait for the delivery of products and then create a receiving report. Before making a payment, it would compare purchase orders with invoices and the receiving report to ensure that they matched each other.
What is an Invoice
Matching Software?
An Invoice matching system is a tool that automatically groups invoices with purchase orders, receipt reports, and other documents associated with them to verify whether it is a valid invoice or not.
Invoice matching software like GoPayables can find, sort, and match invoices in seconds, thanks to its advanced technology, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. Therefore, you can eliminate the need for AP clerks to manually search for documents by requiring them to make the trek downstairs from their offices or search through their email inboxes for vendor attachments.
Watch our demo video and see how GoPayables’ automation solutions can streamline your invoice-matching process.
How does an Invoice
Matching System Work?
Fully automated invoice matching systems employ deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing so that machines can read bills and other documents as people do, regardless of layout or terminology.
Once the invoices have been received, scanned, and converted to digital form, they are matched with purchase orders and receipts for verification by fully automated systems in the following ways:
Data Extraction
The first phase entails extracting precise, in-depth, and semantic information from all appropriate documents—including invoices, purchase orders, product notes, and inspection reports. By combining deep learning, big language models, and text recognition models, softwares like GoPayables can recognize printed and handwritten text. Then all the data in these documents is converted into structured data consisting of fields and values.Line Item Extraction
Automated invoice matching can identify tables, columns, rows, and cells across multi-page documents. Each invoice line item in a table can be extracted and labeled by the program based on its respective column, which makes it much easier to analyze their data more effectively.Product/Service Title Matching
Fully automated invoice matching employs intelligent data-matching techniques, such as GPT-3, to match product titles, descriptions, and other metadata, such as SKU numbers.
Quantity and Price Matching
Quantities and prices are matched regardless of currency and number localization while maintaining the same tolerance level.
Payment and Contract Terms Match
Payment and contract terms are frequently written in everyday English without strict syntactic rules. Fully automated invoice matching uses huge language models to extract and easily understand them.
Approval and Processing
The invoice matching system will then generate a report of all approved invoices so you can review them and make payments when necessary.Why do you need Invoice Matching Automation?
Invoice matching is one of the most important aspects of a business—it allows you to track how much money your company spends on its products, which in turn helps you make better decisions about where to invest future funds.
When you use automated invoice-matching software like GoPayables, it can automatically match invoices and provide various benefits, including:
Fast and Scalable
Unlike manual matching, which can take hours (or even days!), the software can perform 3-way matching in seconds because the process is automated from beginning to end and supports millions of invoices daily, making it scalable.
Lower Costs
The automated matching of invoices reduces the need for human resources, which minimizes your overhead costs. Compared to employing and training new employees, infrastructure and software expenses are less costly than manual paper-matching processes—and more accurate!High Accuracy
Automated procedures produce a high degree of accuracy in the extracted information compared to manual or semi-automated data extraction and document matching processes.Reliably Detects Fraud
Unlike humans, automated invoice matching can quickly search through your previous invoices and identify payments stretched out across time—such as overpayments or duplicate payments.
Improves Vendor Relationships
A quick, accurate, and thorough grasp of invoices can minimize payment delays and satisfy all vendor payment requirements, improving your connections with your suppliers—which is great for business!
How GoPayables Invoice Matching Solutions Make Your Work Easy?
As a business owner, you are always looking for ways to make your work easier. One way is to automate invoice matching—the process of linking invoices with payment requests and sending them off to the finance team for processing.
GoPayables’ Invoice Matching Solutions automate the manual process of invoice matching, saving businesses time and money. Here are some features that make it a must-have:
i) Boosting the efficiency of your accounts payable department
It’s no surprise that matching invoices and payments can be very time-consuming for the payables department. But with GoPayables, the process of matching invoices and payments is simple and fully automated, so you can eliminate manual processes—and make your payables department more efficient.
Let’s assume that processing an invoice costs $10 on average, and if you process 220 invoices each month, it works up to approximately $2,200. If automation reduces this cost by 30%, the monthly savings come to about $660.
ii) Higher visibility and greater compliance
GoPayables provides you with better visibility into your accounts receivable so that you can see all outstanding invoices and filter by date, amount, and type. Instead of searching through your emails during the audit season, you can point auditors to a software tool to help them better understand what was happening on your books at that time. Online audit information can also help auditors collect relevant financial data.
iii) Profit from early payment discounts
An early payment discount is money you can save by paying your invoice before the due date. GoPayables uses advanced technology to match invoices with purchase orders, credit notes, and supplier statements so that you can take full advantage of any discounts.
For example, if you pay $200,000 per month at Net 30 terms and your vendors offer a 2% discount for paying within 15 days instead of the usual 30-day payment period, you could save yourself as much as $4,000 by taking advantage of it.
iv) Approving non-Purchase Order invoices
Invoices don’t always have purchase orders, so an invoice matching system that works only with PO will not work in this environment. You need a system that can handle non-PO invoices without additional applications or data transformations. GoPayables allows you to code and route non-PO invoices for approval based on the amount of money involved or their departmental affiliation.
v) Highlighting and resolving discrepancies
Invoicing errors are common in most companies, leading to the overpayment or underpayment of amounts that run into thousands of dollars yearly. For example, you give a credit note for $100 worth of goods and services, but the supplier accidentally issues one for $500 instead.
To prevent such problems, GoPayables automatically flags and highlights errors, so there’s clarity about what needs to be corrected.
vi) Access, monitor, and update invoices in real-time.
GoPayables’ invoice matching solution allows you to review your invoices and other account information in real time quickly. You can also see which invoices have been approved or rejected and the status of payments for each invoice. You can use this information to take action immediately and ensure your money is spent wisely.
vii) Fast and seamless setup and integration
GoPayables offers a cloud-based invoice matching solution that seamlessly integrates with your existing accounting applications like Quickbooks and others—without any contract, setup, or customization charge. This modular approach allows you to quickly set up and configure the system—without having to overhaul your existing infrastructure or wait for expensive third-party vendors to install new software.
viii) Automated reminders for the approvals process
The system can automatically send out an email reminder to employees who still need to accept their invoices, encouraging them to do so as soon as possible. It will free the AP team from having to chase down these stakeholders individually to get these bills approved.
Ready to match your Invoice Receipts?
Would you like to save time, money, and sanity by automating matching your invoice receipts?
As with most businesses, you spend a lot of time matching invoices to receipts and purchase orders—time that could be better spent elsewhere. To address these challenges, we created GoPayables. Our solution is designed so that it’s simple enough for anyone in your company to use—but also powerful enough to ensure that no critical details are overlooked.
With GoPayables, you can:
- Save time by matching your invoice receipts automatically.
- Generate expense reports faster with fewer errors.
- Avoid errors when matching invoices and receipts manually.
- Track expenses accurately throughout the entire process.
- Set up custom rules to match receipts with the correct invoices.
FAQs
A good invoicing program will have bank-grade security measures to prevent unauthorized access.
At GoPayables, we devote significant time and resources to maintaining the security of our software by following industry-standard protocols. We guarantee that your documents and other information about your clients or products are not accessible to our customer support representatives and that your data is never shared with third parties.
The timesaving and cost-effective invoice matching software will make your life easier if you are a business owner, salesperson, or accountant. With invoice matching software, new invoices are automatically pulled in and matched against existing data so that you can stay on top of all your expenses.
Rather speak with a human? No problem! Give us a call at (888) 216-8880. We’re here to answer any questions you might have.