An invoice reaches your back office. You capture the data, store the document, and the bill is ready for review. Yet it may still include products that never arrived or prices above what your team agreed to pay.
For retailers managing deliveries across multiple locations, those differences can be difficult to catch consistently. A shortage noted at the store may never reach accounts payable. A price discrepancy may become an email thread. A promised credit may remain open long after the original invoice is paid.
2-way, 3-way, and receipt-to-invoice matching give teams a repeatable way to compare what was billed with what was ordered, what was received, or both. Making that verification part of the process helps protect margins and can reduce the time employees spend reconstructing transactions later.
2-way matching compares the purchase order with the supplier’s invoice. It checks the bill against the authorized purchase and can reveal differences, such as a price above the agreed amount.[1][2]
3-way matching compares the purchase order, receiving record, and supplier’s invoice. It checks whether the bill aligns with what was ordered and what the store recorded receiving.[1][2]
Receipt-to-invoice matching compares the receiving record with the supplier’s invoice. It checks whether the quantities billed match what the store recorded receiving, even when no formal purchase order exists.[2]
How a Small Shortage Becomes a Margin Problem
Imagine a delivery of 100 cases at $20 per case. The manager counts 94, notes that six are missing, and gets back to running the store. The supplier’s invoice still lists all 100 cases.
The bill is $2,000. The product that actually arrived is worth $1,880 at the agreed price. There is a $120 shortage to resolve.
The manager checked the delivery, and AP received the invoice, but unless someone connects the receiving evidence to the bill, the business may pay for all 100 cases without realizing that a correction is needed.
If that $120 is never recovered, the retailer has paid for stock it cannot sell. That purchasing loss reduces profit. A price above the agreed cost can have a similar effect even when every case arrives.
Requesting a credit starts the recovery process. The money remains outstanding until the supplier issues the correction and the retailer confirms it was applied. A credit promised in an email can still be missed in the final reconciliation.
The amounts become more meaningful across locations. If each of 50 stores had one unrecovered $120 shortage per month, the annual loss would be $72,000.
Why Even Recovered Dollars Can Be Expensive
Now imagine AP discovers that same shortage several weeks later. The employee reviewing the invoice was not there when the delivery arrived. The manager who checked it may be working another shift.
Someone needs to find the original paperwork, confirm what arrived, contact the store, and ask the supplier whether a credit was issued. If a credit appears, AP must determine whether it belongs to this delivery, another store, or an earlier return.
What began as six missing cases has become a search across documents, emails, and people’s memories.
Even if the retailer eventually recovers the full $120, that recovery consumed employee time. The manager stepped away from the sales floor. AP spent time researching the transaction and following up with the vendor. Repeated across deliveries and locations, this work takes capacity away from other priorities.
Catching the difference while the facts are easy to verify, then tracking it through to recovery, helps protect both profit and employee time.
What Matching Changes in That Same Delivery
In our example, the order and invoice both show 100 cases, so a 2-way match alone would not reveal the short delivery. The documents agree, even though six cases never arrived.
Comparing the invoice with the store’s record of 94 cases received exposes the difference. That shortage becomes visible through either a 3-way match or a receipt-to-invoice comparison when no purchase order exists.[1][2]
The team now has a specific issue to resolve and evidence to support the request. Someone can take responsibility for obtaining a corrected invoice or credit and confirming it was applied.
Addressing the shortage while the facts are fresh helps protect the $120 and can reduce the calls, document searches, and vendor follow-ups needed to piece together the transaction weeks later.
What the Benchmarks Show About AP Workload
Ardent Partners’ 2025 State of ePayables study, led by founder and chief research officer Andrew Bartolini, surveyed 204 AP and finance professionals. It compared the leading 20% of organizations by processing cost and speed with all other teams: [3]
| AP Measure | Best-in-Class Teams | All Other Teams |
|---|---|---|
| Processing cost per invoice | $2.65 | $12.42 |
| Processing time | 2.9 days | 13.5 days |
| Invoices with exceptions | 11.1% | 20.9% |
These results cover broader AP operations; they do not isolate savings from matching alone. Ardent does, however, identify 2- and 3-way matching among the control capabilities of mature AP teams.[3]
For retailers, the practical implication is clear: the work that happens after an invoice arrives deserves as much attention as getting it into the system. An invoice that needs repeated investigation carries a cost beyond the amount on the bill.
APQC also tracks the percentage of invoice lines that match successfully on the first try.[4] That is a useful measure for retailers to adopt alongside processing speed: how much of the work is completed correctly without another round of follow-up?
Where Scanning and EDI Come Together
Scanning at receiving helps the store confirm which products arrived, record quantities, and identify shortages or refused items. EDI provides the supplier’s electronic invoice, including the quantities and item costs billed. Together, they connect what arrived with what the vendor is charging.
When scanning is also used to create the invoice, the retailer still has to capture the supplier’s prices and other billing details correctly. Reading costs from paper, reviewing extracted data, and correcting missed lines or pack sizes add work. The cost stored in the retailer’s price book also needs to be checked against what the supplier actually billed.
EDI reduces the need to recreate that invoice. It delivers the vendor’s billing details electronically, giving AP a supplier-provided record to compare with receiving evidence. Those billed costs can also be checked against the purchase order or agreed pricing.[5][6]
In our example, the receiving record shows 94 cases, while the EDI invoice bills for 100. Comparing them exposes the six-case shortage. AP has evidence to request a correction or credit without first rebuilding the vendor’s invoice from store-entered information.
The benefit extends beyond faster data entry. Receiving checks help establish what the business actually received. EDI supplies the billing details needed to investigate differences. A connected process can help protect the $120 at risk and reduce the work of finding paperwork, confirming prices, and chasing explanations later.
Start With the Transactions Your Team Already Struggles to Explain
Choose a few recent shortages, price disputes, or outstanding credits. Follow each from delivery to resolution, and count the documents, calls, and people needed to establish what happened.
Identify what would have helped: a clearer receiving record, an agreed price available for comparison, a person responsible for vendor follow-up, or confirmation that a credit was applied.
Improve one vendor or transaction type first. Track how often bills match on the first review, how long differences stay open, and whether credits are recovered. The process should make transactions easier to explain without requiring duplicate entry.
Building That Foundation With Fintech
PaymentSource® Premium helps consolidate non-alcohol invoice data from participating vendors and deliver standardized line-item details into the retailer’s back-office system. Vendors can provide supported electronic files, including EDI. Invoice Builder offers another option for vendors willing to create digital invoices through the portal.[5][7]
OrderSource® supports purchase-order distribution, invoice-to-PO validation, exception alerts, and visibility into orders and related invoices.[8] A complete three-way process also requires reliable receiving records and a supported workflow for comparing them with the order and invoice.
Every new delivery adds another transaction to explain if the records do not stay connected. Matching helps retailers identify what needs attention while the facts are still easy to verify, protect dollars that might otherwise go unrecovered, and reduce the work of piecing the transaction together later.
Contact Fintech to review your invoice and order workflows, identify where discrepancies become lost dollars or extra work, and assess how PaymentSource Premium and OrderSource can support a more consistent process.
Sources
[1] Microsoft Learn. Accounts payable invoice matching overview. Two-way and three-way comparisons and configured tolerances.
[2] Oracle PeopleSoft documentation. Matching Types. Two-way, three-way, and receipt-only matching.
[3] Andrew Bartolini, Ardent Partners. The State of ePayables 2025 – AP’s Unfinished Journey, June 2025. Pages 23-24 and 28; methodology on page 37. Cross-industry AP benchmarks, not a matching-only savings study.
[4] APQC. Percentage of invoice line items that are matched the first time, measure 102149. Accessed October 27, 2026.
[5] Medius. Accounts Payable Automation Benchmark Report, 2024. Pages 17 and 19. Separate definitions for automatic capture and automatic processing of PO invoices.
[6] Fintech. PaymentSource Invoice Data Management. Electronic invoicing, Invoice Builder, and standardized invoice data.
[7] PDI Technologies. 4 Value-Adds of Future-Proofing Your Business with EDI, August 20, 2025. PaymentSource Premium integration for non-alcohol invoice data.
[8] Fintech Knowledge Base. What is OrderSource, June 12, 2026. Purchase-order distribution, invoice validation, alerts, and reporting.
