Match supplier invoices to purchase orders and receipts, with exceptions to AP

Accounts payable has to check each supplier invoice against the purchase order and the goods receipt before paying it. Most invoices match, but finding the few with wrong prices, short deliveries, duplicate invoice numbers or missing PO references means reading every one, and approvals stall while someone chases the buyer.

The agent picks up invoices once their data has been extracted (see the invoice extraction playbook) and looks up the referenced purchase order and receipts in your accounting or ERP system. It performs a two-way match (invoice against PO) or three-way match (invoice, PO and receipt) line by line on quantity, unit price and totals, within tolerances you set. Invoices that match are queued for normal payment approval. Exceptions get a short explanation: which line is off, by how much, and what the likely cause is, such as a price change, a partial delivery or a duplicate. The agent drafts a question to the buyer or supplier for AP to send and keeps the invoice on hold until the exception is cleared. It never approves payment or changes vendor bank details.

1. Confirm your invoice data extraction is reliable first, with PO numbers captured
2. Decide which suppliers and spend types use two-way and which use three-way matching
3. Set price and quantity tolerances, and a zero tolerance for duplicates
4. Give the agent read access to purchase orders, receipts and the vendor list, and write access only to a review queue or hold flag
5. Define the exception types and the draft message for each
6. Run it alongside your current process for a month and compare its matches with what AP decided
7. Once it agrees with AP, let matched invoices skip manual line checking but keep normal payment approval

• QuickBooks Online
• Xero
• NetSuite
• Bill.com
• Stampli
• Make or n8n + an LLM

Not ranked. Tools marked Featured pay for a highlighted listing; that never decides which tools we include. Check each vendor's current features and pricing.

Make one of these tools? Feature your tool on every playbook where it is already listed.

AP approves every payment run, and every exception is cleared by a person. Changes to vendor bank details are verified by phone or another channel you already trust, never by the agent. Tolerance changes and write-offs are finance decisions.

Invoice fraud often arrives as a convincing invoice or a request to change bank details, so the agent should flag those, not process them. A wrong PO match can pay the wrong supplier or pay twice, so check duplicates on supplier and invoice number and amount. Loose tolerances hide overbilling. Keep the agent's access read-only on the ledger and log every match decision for audit.

Measure against your own baseline: invoices processed per AP hour, the share that matched without a person touching the lines, time from invoice receipt to approval, and duplicates or overpayments caught. The value is AP time spent on exceptions instead of on invoices that were already right.