Stop Paying the Wrong Invoice Amounts

Automate Invoice Workflows So You Only Touch the Exceptions

For: AP Directors, Shared Services Leaders, Controllers managing invoice operations
Outcome: Eliminate duplicate payments, reduce AP touches by 40-50%, cut invoice cycle time in half

Your AP team shouldn't spend their days hunting for invoices in email, manually checking for duplicates, or chasing down missing PO numbers. Invoice Intake & 3-Way Match Automation creates the transaction truth foundation that makes everything else possible—from AI-driven exceptions to contract enforcement. You can't validate contract prices if you can't trust your invoice data.

The Problem: When Invoice Processing Is Detective Work

Most AP departments operate as cleanup crews. Invoices arrive via email, portal, EDI, and paper. Some have PO numbers, some don’t. Some are duplicates with slightly different invoice numbers. Some reference contracts that procurement negotiated but AP can’t access.

The typical sequence: AP receives 400 invoices per day. Staff manually logs each one into a tracking spreadsheet. They search three systems to find the matching PO. They email the requester to confirm receipt. They compare invoice line items to PO line items in separate screens. They flag exceptions—wrong price, wrong quantity, no PO—and route them to… someone. Maybe procurement. Maybe the requester. Then they wait.

The Operational Tax:

60-80% of invoices require manual intervention

8-12 minutes per invoice for PO matching and exception research

Exception resolution takes 14-21 days on average

0.8-1.2% of invoices are paid twice
(most organizations never discover all of them)

AP teams can't answer "where is my invoice?" without checking email chains

This isn’t an AP competency problem. It’s a systems problem. When invoice intake is decentralized and matching is manual, AP becomes a bottleneck instead of a control point.

The Operational Change:
Centralized Intake, Automated Matching, Exception Intelligence

Invoice Intake & 3-Way Match Automation transforms AP from transaction processing to exception management.

Centralized intake

replaces email-based invoice receipt with a single ingestion point. Whether invoices arrive via email, EDI, portal, or scan, they're captured in one system, OCR-processed for data extraction, and automatically routed based on business rules. AP stops logging invoices manually. The system logs them.

Automated 2-way and 3-way matching

validates invoices against PO and receipt data without human intervention. The system compares invoice header to PO header (vendor, amount, terms), line items to PO line items (quantity, price, description), and—for 3-way match—receipt confirmation. Invoices that match within tolerance pass straight through to payment queue. Invoices that don't match route to exceptions with specific error codes: price variance, quantity over-shipment, no PO, no receipt.

Duplicate detection

runs at intake, not at payment. The system checks invoice number, vendor, amount, and date against all invoices received in the past 90 days. Suspected duplicates are flagged before they enter the approval workflow, not after AP has already processed them.

Exception routing

replaces email chains with structured workflows. When an invoice fails matching, it routes to the right person based on exception type: price variances to procurement, quantity variances to receiving, missing POs to requesters. Each exception includes context—what failed, why it failed, what data is missing—so resolvers can fix it in one step instead of three back-and-forth emails.

"AP touches invoices only when the system can't resolve them".
"Clean invoices (60-70% of volume) process touchless."
"Exceptions route automatically with full context for fast resolution."

Focused professional male in modern office environment, emphasizing outcome-driven approaches and innovative solutions.

Steven T. CFO

Before vs After:

Metric	Before (Manual)	After (Automated Foundation)
Invoices requiring manual PO lookup	70-80%	0%
Average touches per invoice	2.5-3.0	1.0-1.5
Invoice cycle time (receipt to approval)	12-18 days	5-8 days
Exception resolution time	14-21 days	5-7 days
Duplicate payment rate	0.8-1.2%	<0.1%

What You'll Measure: Six KPIs That Show Control

Start Here

Schedule a 30-Minute Source-to-Pay Value Discovery Session

We’ll review your current invoice volume, cycle time, and touches-per-invoice to baseline where you are today. Then we’ll model Phase 1A impact: touchless rate improvement, cycle time reduction, duplicate payment prevention, and capacity gained. You’ll leave with a one-page estimate of what Invoice Intake & 3-Way Match Automation will deliver for your organization.