This article documents how Bizzi described the Invoice – Purchase Order – Grand Place reconciliation problem in 2022. This is historical information about the product's development direction at that time, not a description of current functionality or performance promises.
If you're looking for the current concept and how it works, see the article. What is 3-way matching?. If you are currently evaluating Bizzi products, see Solutions for processing and matching input invoices.
The manual invoice reconciliation process described in 2022
In a purchasing process with a purchase order (PO), accountants typically need to check the invoice against the purchase order and delivery information before moving on to recording or payment steps. When data is located across multiple departments and systems, this task may include:
- Receive invoices from suppliers.
- Check the supplier information and invoice.
- Find the purchase order (PO) related to the transaction.
- Obtain delivery or acceptance data.
- Compare the quantity, unit price, and value between the documents.
- Refer any discrepancies to the person in charge for processing.
- Transfer the verified results to the next accounting or payment step.
The difficulty lies not just in "comparing three files." A purchase order (PO) can relate to multiple invoices or multiple deliveries; the product names on the invoice and PO may differ; and some transactions may not go through a PO at all. Therefore, the practical process needs to clearly define which documents must match and which exceptions require human review.
How are Invoice, Purchase Order (PO), and Gross Merchandise (GR) related?
| Document | Key information to verify |
| Invoice | Supplier, invoice number, goods/services, quantity, unit price, total amount. |
| PO | Items/services ordered, quantity, unit price, and purchase terms. |
| GR/Receipt/Acceptance Report | Actual volume received or completed. |
When three data sources are used together, accountants have more grounds to determine whether an invoice matches the purchase transaction before approval. However, not every business and every transaction applies the same 3-way matching model; in some cases, only 2-way matching is needed, or additional acceptance documents may be required.
How did Bizzi approach the automation problem?
In 2022, Bizzi introduced a system to automate the steps of collecting invoice data and reconciling it with purchase documents, aiming to reduce repetitive accounting tasks and focus users on exceptional cases.
In terms of process, this approach can be understood in three layers:
- Normalize input data: Return information from invoices, purchase orders, and delivery notes to comparable fields.
- Apply the matching rule: Check fields such as supplier, item code, quantity, unit price, or total amount according to the business configuration.
- Exception separation: Matched transactions proceed to the workflow; mismatched transactions are forwarded to the person in charge for verification.
This is an operating principle, not a guarantee that all documents can be processed completely automatically. The level of automation depends on the data, the level of PO/GR standardization, the type of transaction, business rules, and the scope of integration.
Situations that make automatic matching more difficult
- One purchase order – multiple invoices: We need to control the portion of the value that has been previously invoiced.
- One invoice – multiple purchase orders: Each line item or portion of the value needs to be allocated to the correct order.
- Multiple deliveries: It is necessary to consolidate or separate the delivery data for each shipment.
- Different product names: The code or description from the vendor does not completely match the internal master data.
- No purchase order: The process should use a different basis instead of the purchase order and should not be mechanically applied to 3-way matching.
- Difference within the threshold: Businesses need to establish tolerance guidelines instead of requiring all fields to be absolutely equal.
Is 3-way matching the entire invoice processing procedure?
Are not. 3-way matching is just one control step when a transaction has sufficient invoices, purchase orders, and matching delivery/acceptance data. The input invoice processing process may also include invoice receipt, data verification, duplicate detection, exception approval, accounting, data transfer to ERP, and payment preparation.
Therefore, if the goal is to understand the matching mechanism specifically, check out the in-depth owner. 3-way matching and 2-way/3-way comparison. If the goal is to evaluate the entire invoice processing flow, the page Bizzi's input invoice processing software That is a more appropriate point of reference.
Why was this article kept?
The content is retained as part of the product history, showing that since 2022 Bizzi has focused on connecting invoices with purchase data rather than simply indexing files. However, functional descriptions, automation rates, storage, or trial programs from that time are not used here as a commitment to the current product.
Conclude
Invoice-PO-GR reconciliation helps businesses bring purchasing control before the payment step, but its effectiveness depends on data quality and exception design. Automation is most valuable when the system can process transactions with clear rules and correctly forward cases requiring judgment to accounting, rather than aiming to completely replace human verification.
