Blog written by Jon Brucato
Scanners play a critical role in modern retail operations. They are fast, familiar, and effective at confirming that products physically arrived at the store. Many retailers run into trouble, though, by asking scanners to do more than they were ever designed to do; specifically, using scanned quantities as the basis for invoice creation and accounts payable.
That practice feels efficient in the moment, but in reality, it introduces downstream risk, error, and unnecessary workload for AP teams. The best-run retail organizations are increasingly separating inventory visibility from financial accuracy, using scanners for what they do best and letting clean EDI invoices serve as the system of record.
What Scanners Are Good At—And What They Aren’t
UPC scanning is an excellent tool for initial receiving. It helps confirm that a delivery showed up, provides immediate inventory visibility, and supports spot checks on high-risk or high-value items. That alone delivers operational value.
Where scanning breaks down is when it becomes the source of truth for quantities billed. Industry benchmarks consistently show that manual data capture—including scan-based quantity entry—carries error rates ranging from 1% to 3% per transaction. In high-volume retail environments, that compounds quickly. Missed scans, double scans, incorrect pack sizes, substitutes, and human fatigue all contribute. These are not training issues; they are structural realities of manual processes.
When scanned quantities are used to generate invoices, AP teams are left reconciling discrepancies without a reliable reference point. Was the issue a receiving error, a scan miss, a price book mismatch, or a vendor issue? The answer is rarely clear, and resolving it takes time.
The Hidden AP Cost of Scan-Built Invoices
From an accounts payable perspective, invoices built from scans create more work, not less. Every exception requires investigation. Every mismatch forces a manual decision. Industry data from APQC and IOFM shows that manual invoice handling increases processing time by 5–8 minutes per invoice and significantly raises the likelihood of rework, disputes, and delayed payments.
Retailers feel this most acutely at scale. As invoice volumes grow, small inconsistencies multiply into systemic noise. AP teams spend their time force-balancing instead of reviewing true exceptions. Finance leaders lose confidence in inventory visibility and cost reporting. Operations teams feel pressure to ‘get everything scanned perfectly,’ an unrealistic expectation in fast-moving store environments.
Why EDI Invoicing Should Be the System of Record
Electronic invoices transmitted via EDI come directly from the vendor’s system and represent what the vendor is actually billing. They include accurate quantities, pack sizes, costs, and allowances without manual intervention. That makes them fundamentally different from invoices built from store-level scans.
Best-practice retailers treat EDI invoices as the authoritative financial record and use scanning as a complementary operational signal. When the invoice arrives—same day or next day— it is reconciled against what was received. Variances surface immediately and systematically, rather than being buried inside a manually created invoice.
This approach also standardizes the process across locations. Instead of relying on hundreds of store-level behaviors to produce clean data, accuracy is centralized and consistent. AP teams move from data entry to exception management. Finance gains confidence in item-level cost data.
Addressing Concerns About Same-Day Reconciliation
One of the most common objections to this model is timing. Retailers worry that if inventory isn’t perfectly confirmed and posted the same day, something is lost. In practice, the opposite is true.
Delaying final reconciliation until the EDI invoice arrives does not reduce control. It improves it. Inventory systems are designed to handle temporary variance states. Posting receipts to an inventory sub-ledger, then reconciling against the invoice at the end of the day or the next day, preserves accuracy while reducing noise.
What matters is not when reconciliation happens, but whether it happens against clean data. Same-day reconciliation built on imperfect scans creates a false sense of precision. Next-day reconciliation against a verified invoice creates clarity. Nothing disappears in that window—discrepancies are actually easier to identify because the data is consistent.
The Best-Practice Model Retailers Are Moving Forward With
Leading retailers are aligning on a simple principle: scan to confirm delivery, not to build invoices. They use scanning to establish inventory presence and perform targeted spot checks. They rely on EDI invoices to post financials, surface discrepancies, and drive vendor accountability.
The result is fewer invoice errors, faster AP processing, reduced disputes, and stronger vendor relationships. Store teams spend less time keying and rechecking. AP teams spend less time guessing. Finance teams gain confidence that inventory and costs reflect reality—not best efforts.
Scanners and EDI are not competing tools. They are complementary when used correctly. The retailers seeing the most value are the ones that let each do what it does best.
