Invoice and order reconciliation

The bottleneck

Invoices arrive as PDFs and emails in a dozen different layouts. Someone opens each one, finds the line items, and checks them by hand against the purchase order and the goods that were actually received. Most match. The few that don't — wrong quantity, wrong price, duplicate billing — are exactly the ones worth catching, and they hide in the volume.

What's possible

A system can read each invoice, extract the line items regardless of layout, and reconcile them against your existing order and delivery data automatically. Clean matches pass through. Only the exceptions land on someone's desk, already explained: what was expected, what was billed, and where they diverge.

How it would work

• Invoices are collected from a shared inbox or upload folder as they arrive.
• Each one is parsed into structured line items — supplier, item, quantity, unit price, totals — using document understanding that tolerates different formats.
• Those line items are matched against your orders and delivery records, with tolerances you define for rounding, partial shipments, and agreed price changes.
• Clean matches are logged. Mismatches and low-confidence reads are flagged in a review queue with the discrepancy spelled out.
• A person approves, corrects, or rejects each exception — and the system keeps a clear record of who decided what.

Where it pays off

The routine matching stops consuming a person's day, and the exceptions get more attention rather than less. Overbilling and duplicate invoices are caught before they're paid, and there's an auditable trail behind every approval. The point isn't to remove the human — it's to put them only where judgement is actually needed.