Three-Way Match Variance
Compare every vendor invoice to its purchase order and goods receipt, then resolve price and quantity differences before payment.
Tools
NetSuite, SAP Ariba, Coupa, Tipalti
Outcomes
Duplicate invoices blocked before payment • Price variances resolved in days instead of months • A receipt-backed trail on every matched invoice
Documentation
Instruction-ready detail below
Most AP teams approve against the invoice header, so the price on the purchase order and the quantity that actually arrived never get compared. A twelve percent overcharge or a second invoice for the same receipt posts cleanly and is only discovered weeks later, during reconciliation. The workflow starts by pulling every open invoice in the ledger along with its PO and goods receipt reference. It compares unit price, extended amount, quantity, and tax line to the purchase order and to the recorded receipt, then sorts the result into two piles. Exact matches go to the payment run. Everything else goes to an exception queue with the size and type of the gap attached, so the clerk opens the queue already knowing what to argue about. Each resolution is written back against the vendor, so a supplier who overcharges repeatedly shows up in the next run instead of being rediscovered. A person still approves every exception, every credit request, and the final release of the payment batch.