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Proof of concept

Invoice and purchase order reconciliation

A finance team receives supplier invoices as email attachments in a dozen different layouts. Each one is compared by eye against a purchase order and a goods received note. The clean ones are tedious and the mismatched ones tend to surface after payment has already gone out.

A workflow diagram where several systems feed one automated path

What we built

  • Automatic reading of invoices, purchase orders and goods received notes regardless of supplier layout
  • Line by line matching on quantity, rate, tax and total, with tolerance thresholds set by the finance team rather than hard coded
  • Clean three way matches routed straight into the approval queue
  • Mismatches held back with the reason written in plain language beside the two values that disagree
  • A full audit trail recording what was compared, what was decided and which rule applied

What it showed

The proof of concept cleared straightforward invoices without human involvement and put every exception in front of the finance team on the day it arrived rather than at month end.

What a live engagement needs

Going live needs a sample of real supplier documents across the awkward formats, the current tolerance rules, and a parallel run alongside the existing process until the two agree.

Services behind it

Related proof of concept work

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