Few processes seem as deceptively simple as invoice matching. At a glance, it’s just a matter of aligning an invoice with a purchase order and a receipt. But beneath that surface lies a maze of inefficiencies that quietly erode margins, delay reporting, and expose businesses to risk- especially when it comes to matching invoices accurately.
For many large organisations, poor invoice matching isn’t just a nuisance.. it’s a systemic blind spot.
What Is Invoice Matching, Really?
Factuur matching is the process of verifying that the details on a supplier’s invoice align with the relevant purchase order (PO) and goods received note (GRN). This is often called 2-Way of 3-Weg aanpassing.
In theory, it’s about preventing overpayment, catching fraud, and ensuring what’s being paid for was actually ordered and delivered.
In practice, though, especially in complex or high-volume environments, things get messy.
- PO numbers go missing.
- Invoices arrive before goods do.
- Line items don’t align – not because they’re wrong, but because formatting, units, or manual entry distort them.
- Exceptions become the rule.
And when that happens, your finance team ends up in firefighting mode: chasing down stakeholders, manually cross-referencing documents, and holding up payments. It’s inefficient, error-prone, and it burns valuable time- especially when matching invoices becomes a manual, reactive process instead of a streamlined one.
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The Cost You Don’t See on the Balance Sheet
The direct costs such as late payment fees, duplicate payments, or missed early payment discounts are measurable. But the more damaging costs are harder to quantify:
- Cash Flow Obscurity: When invoice statuses are unclear, forecasting becomes guesswork. This hampers treasury operations and creates unnecessary working capital buffers.
- Audit and Compliance Risk: Mismatched or poorly documented transactions create red flags in audits, increasing regulatory exposure.
- Operational Drag: AP teams bogged down in manual matching can’t focus on more strategic tasks like supplier relationship management or process improvement.
- Supplier Friction: Delays and errors in payments damage trust, especially with strategic vendors.
And for businesses at scale, these aren’t isolated incidents – they’re patterns. Patterns that stem from the inefficiencies of matching invoices manually and add up to both time and money.
Why It’s Not Just a Finance Problem
Invoice matching might live in accounts payable, but its roots and ripple effects touch procurement, operations, and IT. When processes are fragmented across departments or tools, the lack of shared visibility only magnifies the issue.
This is why finance professionals aren’t just looking for better tools, they’re rethinking the process itself. They’re asking:
- Where are the disconnects between purchasing, receiving, and payment?
- What percentage of invoices go through straight-through processing vs. manual intervention?
- How do we reduce exceptions without increasing rigidity?
At the heart of these questions is the need for a more integrated, intelligent approach to matching invoices, not just automating them. The answers require more than automation. They require alignment.
What Fixing the Problem Actually Delivers
So, when invoice matching works, it’s not because every exception magically disappears, it’s because the inputs are structured, and the process is designed to handle complexity without human bottlenecks.
Fixing the problem starts with automating the parts of the process that should never have needed manual effort in the first place:
- Auto-ingestion of invoice data from PDFs, EDI feeds, and portals. No more copy-paste errors or email chasing.
- Real-time validation against POs and receipts, flagging mismatches instantly instead of after the payment run.
- Defined rules and tolerances that handle common edge cases automatically, so teams only intervene when it actually matters.
The result isn’t just fewer errors, it’s a shift in how finance operates:
- Cycle times shrink from days to hours.
- Cash flow becomes predictable, because liabilities are clearer.
- AP teams reclaim capacity to focus on analysis, not admin.
- Suppliers trust the process, because it works consistently.
You don’t fix matching invoices just to check a compliance box. You fix it to create space, for control, for insight, and for scale.
Are Poorly Matching Invoices A Hidden Problem In Your Business?
If any of this feels uncomfortably familiar, whether it’s the exceptions, the delays, the unclear liabilities – you’re not alone.
Most large businesses don’t realise how much time and value is lost in matching invoices until they stop to look closely. But, this is a solvable problem. With the right approach, automation doesn’t just streamline a messy process it unlocks time, clarity, and control across your finance function.
If you’re curious about what that could look like in your organisation – How much could be automated, where your biggest inefficiencies are hiding, and what a better process might mean for your team — let’s talk.