Intelligent Invoice Processing - 2 Way Invoice Matching In Accounts Payable

By
Sweety Bajaj
Product Manager

Intelligent Invoice Matching

Accounts Payable (AP) departments have thousands of invoices that need to be processed every month.

In order to avoid unauthorized spending, invoice fraud, and duplicate or fraudulent payments to vendors, they have to manually comb through purchase orders, invoices, and receipts to match them.

This time and resource-draining invoice matching process is highly essential for accounts payable operations to run smoothly. Invoice matching ensures that payments are released after invoices are verified against supporting documents.

What is 2-Way Matching in Accounts Payable?

2-way matching invoices requires matching a submitted supplier invoice to a pre-approved purchase order. Two way matching is also know as purchase order matching where an invoice and purchase order are matched based on precise figures.

This is a default matching invoices technique used by most businesses. Once the invoice details are extracted, they are automatically matched and verified against pre-defined purchase order details.

This ensures that the vendor has billed the authorized amount before payment is processed.

What is Three-Way Matching?

3-way invoice matching goes an extra step to match the submitted vendor invoice with the purchase order and the order receipt.

In a 3-way invoice approval process, the invoice details are first matched against the purchase order details. This three-way matching ensures that the invoice information matches both the purchase order information as well as the receipt information.

If the invoice passes this PO verification, it is further matched with the order receipt fields to verify if the quantity billed in the invoice actually matches what was delivered.

3-way invoice matching is becoming the standard as it offers more protection from any fraudulent or incorrect payments to the vendor.

What is Four Way Invoice Matching?

In an effort to make invoice payments even more secure, some businesses use four-way matching too.

This adds another layer of verification where the invoice is matched against the corresponding purchase order, receiving, order receipt, and inspection data.

As a part of purchasing process invoice details should match with the acceptance or inspection document. The delivered goods or services are internally inspected and a report is submitted. AP departments then match the vendor's receipt and invoice against the inspection report to validate the correct delivery.

How Intelligent Invoice Matching Process Works

Infrrd for Invoice is an AI and ML-powered Intelligent Document Processing solution that has Intelligent Invoice Matching capability. Through an automated invoice matching an invoice is processes automatically and sent back for approval.

Accounts Payable departments can automate 2-way, 3-way, and unlimited invoice matching seamlessly with no coding necessary.

Infrrd for Invoice has pre-configured business rules for invoice matching. Let's take a look at how it works.

Extraction

First, Infrrd for Invoice accurately extracts important data (such as line items, codes, quantities, invoice amount, invoice number etc.) from your invoices for matching.

Unlimited Invoice Matching

Infrrd for Invoice is easily configured to handle the above-mentioned 2-way, 3-way, and 4-way matching that most AP departments have begun to adopt into their standard practice.

But looking beyond today's needs...

Infrrd knows that change and unexpected complexity is always on the horizon.

As businesses vary and evolve, invoices may need to be matched with any number of other internal or external documents in order to validate them for payment.

Through its custom business rules, Infrrd for Invoice can be easily configured to match details from an unlimited number of documents and report the level of match for each, in the same way as 2- 3- and 4-way matching.

Decision-Making

Vendors make mistakes too. With Intelligent Invoice Matching, you can configure the invoice processing queue to review invoices that are not a perfect match but are very close.

This can also help in detecting duplicate or fraudulent invoices.

Review & Approval Made Easy

Automated process of invoice with Infrrd enables accounts payable departments to automate invoice matching process to look for invoice exceptions and meet matching tolerances.

Faster, automated payments to vendors free up time to follow up with invoices that need more verification or correction, reducing the risk of overpayments or duplicate payments.

FAQs on Invoice Matching Process Automation

How invoice matching occurs?

Commonly invoice matching is done manually by AP executives who go through extracted data from invoices and match the required fields with extracted data from purchase orders. This is a time consuming task that can be automated with Intelligent Invoice Matching.

What is touchless invoice processing?

Fully touchless invoice processing is possible with automated invoice matching. The automated processing of invoices can help you match invoices with purchase orders more quickly and expedite faster payments to vendors so that they stay satisfied.

Furthermore, the business can benefit from better contract offers and early payment discounts, resulting in a higher profit margin.

How an invoice hold occurs?

An invoice hold occurs when the invoice submitted by the vendor does not match the purchase order particulars or the delivery receipts causing a mismatch.

How many ways of invoice matching is there?

In theory, there is no limit to how many ways an invoice can be matched. It depends on the business process needs but general practice is to match invoices at least 2 ways to ensure correct payments.

Frequently asked questions

What technology is better than OCR?

OCR, short for "optical character recognition," gives information in a one-way manner. But the more advanced version is IDP, which stands for "Intelligent Document Processing," and does more than the latter by recognizing characters. It can break down the whole content and the context of the document in several ways. Modern AI techniques like machine learning and natural language processing are used together to produce more meaningful results. As a result, IDP can extract the content and determine the organization and meaning of each item in the document more like humans.

 What is the market for intelligent document processing?

Several industries use IDP. Here are some intelligent document processing uses that IDP provides: time-saving, better accuracy in accounting, documentation of loan applications, and other data processing processes. IDP is a trusted solution for automated data processing in numerous industries, including finance, legal, insurance, and logistics. Since it enables the sector to produce excellent results by concentrating more on the essential operations of the business system, even in human resource departments of industries, employee surveys, other HR data, employee screening, and resume processing are all possible with IDP.

What are the key innovation drivers supported by IDP?

IDP supports tremendous innovations in data-driven decision-making, deriving value from business documents and agile development.

To know more, book a 15-min session with an IDP expert

How can IDP help organizations eliminate operational inefficiencies?

Businesses can improve operational efficiencies using IDP by automating repetitive tasks, reducing errors, and increasing the processing volume.

To know more, book a 15-min session with an IDP expert

How can a business benefit from intelligent document processing systems in the context of accounting?

Intelligent Document Processing, or IDP, is perfect for accounting. It uses machine learning and mighty AI tools to handle data swiftly and accurately. Organizations find IDP useful because machines, unlike humans, don't tire or get sidetracked. What's more, they don't make expensive mistakes during paperwork management. This reliability improves operations with fewer mishaps. It significantly boosts the organization's overall work quality and productivity.

What are the potential challenges or considerations when implementing IDP?

One of the major challenges while implementing IDP is the normalization of the new workflows. Personnel training, process enhancements, and full assimilation require time to get fully absorbed by an organization.

To know more, book a 15-min session with an IDP expert

How does your solution handle corrections?

Did you know no system is 100% accurate all the time?  When extraction errors occur you want to correct them.  We provide a simple UI that your business analyst will use to make corrections.

To know more, book a 15-min session with an IDP expert

Does your solution work with handwriting?

Our solution excels at data extraction from handwriting.  We've got proprietary methods and techniques that do the trick.  It's pretty cool.  See for yourself.

To know more, book a 15-min session with an IDP expert