What it produces
Posted invoices, or invoices on hold with a clear reason code and an owner.
Workflows
AP Three-Way Match
the accounts payable check that a supplier invoice agrees with its purchase order and receiving record before it is paid
The job in one minute
Who owns it
Accounts payable, with buyers, receiving and the controller stepping in on exceptions.
How often
Every day, with volume swings at month end.
Why it hurts
Invoices land in a shared mailbox or sit on supplier portals until someone downloads them. A clerk keys the header, hunts for the PO and picks receipt lines one at a time. When the ERP objects, the clerk emails a buyer, walks to the dock and waits.
The expensive mistakes are procedural, not arithmetic:
- Matching quantity up to the invoice instead of down to the receipt, so the books carry goods that never arrived.
- Converting each vs. case of 12 by hand, so item cost drifts.
- Accepting a price increase just to make the payment run.
- Partial invoices that each pass tolerance but together overbill the line.
And while an invoice sits in a hold queue, the early-payment discount quietly expires.
Systems it touches
The agent works each system through the screen from a machine in your office. It reads the vendor master but never edits it, and it never releases payments. Clean EDI invoices stay with your translator; the agent takes the ones that fail mapping. Product →
- Your ERP
- Outlook
- Supplier and distributor portals
- EDI translator
- Excel
- SharePoint or OneDrive
- Banking portals
- Tax portals
12 steps · 3 actions · 7 decisions · 2 human reviews
The workflow, step by step
Action Decision Human review Select a step in the flowchart to jump to it.
Show the flowchart
- 01 Action · Portal Collect invoices from the AP mailbox and supplier portals
- 02 Decision · Agent Duplicate test on vendor, cleaned-up invoice number and amount
- 03 Decision · Agent Is the PO open and for this vendor? If not, it goes to the buyer
- 04 Action · ERP Key the header in the ERP and pull the received-but-not-invoiced lines
- 05 Decision · Agent Convert units only by the factor in your conversion table
- 06 Decision · Agent Quantity at or below what was received matches
- 07 Decision · Agent Price inside the vendor or commodity tolerance
- 08 Decision · Agent Freight and surcharges pass only where the PO terms allow them
- 09 · Human review · Buyer The buyer sees invoice
- 10 · Human review · Receiving Receiving confirms or posts a missing receipt
- 11 Action · ERP Post or hold with a reason code
- 12 Decision · Agent Every morning
-
Action · Portal
Collect invoices from the AP mailbox and supplier portals, fingerprint each file, and read header and lines: vendor, invoice number, PO, quantity, unit, price, freight, tax.
-
Decision · Agent
Duplicate test on vendor, cleaned-up invoice number and amount. A match is rejected with the original voucher cited.
-
Decision · Agent
Is the PO open and for this vendor? If not, it goes to the buyer. A PO invoice never slides onto the non-PO path.
-
Action · ERP
Key the header in the ERP and pull the received-but-not-invoiced lines.
-
Decision · Agent
Convert units only by the factor in your conversion table. Unknown pairs go to the buyer.
-
Decision · Agent
Quantity at or below what was received matches. Any excess is cut back and held as a quantity variance.
-
Decision · Agent
Price inside the vendor or commodity tolerance, and the running line total inside its limit, matches. Anything else is a price variance.
-
Decision · Agent
Freight and surcharges pass only where the PO terms allow them. Otherwise short-pay and draft a notice to the supplier.
-
Human review · Buyer
The buyer sees invoice, PO line and price history side by side and chooses: change the PO, request a credit memo or accept with a reason.
-
Human review · Receiving
Receiving confirms or posts a missing receipt.
-
Action · ERP
Post or hold with a reason code, check the ERP shows the intended status, and send each owner one morning digest instead of one email per invoice.
-
Decision · Agent
Every morning, retest held invoices and release the ones whose cause has cleared.
✓ Done
Rules vs judgment
The person who keyed an invoice can never approve its discrepancy. Tolerance and conversion tables belong to the controller, and every edit is logged.
When it stops
-
Duplicate invoice
Rejected, both files linked to the original voucher.
-
Invoice ahead of the goods
Held and retested each morning until the receipt posts.
-
Price outside tolerance
Buyer review with price history.
-
New remit-to or bank details
Stopped and handed to vendor master change control, outside AP.
-
Currency differs from the PO or date falls in a closed period
Controller decides.
-
Discount date approaching while on hold
Jumps to the top of its reviewer's queue.
What you end up with
- A short review queue instead of an overflowing inbox.
- Every posted invoice tied to its file, its matched PO and receipt lines, the tolerance rule that applied and any approver's reason.
- Discount dates surfaced before the payment run, not after.
- An audit trail your controller can sample at month end. Hours are planning estimates from the Process Atlas.
Questions
Does the agent approve price variances?
No. It applies the tolerance you set and matches only inside it. Outside it, the buyer decides with everything on one screen.
What about lines with no receipt, like services or tooling?
A table maps each PO line type to two-way, three-way or four-way matching, and the agent follows whichever the line carries.
Can we start with just the exception queue?
Yes. Steps 9 to 12 can run on invoices your team already keyed. Intake and entry join once the rules hold through a real month end.
Does it release payments?
No. The workflow ends at posted or held. Payment runs stay with treasury.
No prompts. No babysitting. No Integrations.