Matching a Purchase Invoice with an Order of an External Ordering System

Location: Purchase invoices > Create Purchase Invoice

Matching external purchase orders is an additional feature of the application. Matching purchase invoices to purchase orders of an external ordering system requires that purchase orders are imported into the application from the external ordering system. For more information, see Import Purchase Orders.

Purchase invoices can only be matched to purchase orders that contain receipt entries. Partially received will be deemed sufficient, i.e., if part of the ordered amount on an order row has been marked as received.

Matching can be performed on the title data of the purchase order, on individual order rows, or receipts. The Purchase Invoice Settings function specifies whether the goods receipts processing is enabled. The available matching methods are as follows:

Order level matching of the purchase invoice and purchase order. This requires a purchase order that matches the purchase invoice. The posting rows from the purchase order are imported into the purchase invoice and the purchase invoice is marked as matched.
Order row matching of the purchase invoice and purchase order. The order rows equivalent to the purchase invoice are selected from the purchase order. For each selected order row, the user can change the quantity and unit price used in matching.
Receipt row matching of the purchase invoice and purchase order. The receipt rows equivalent to the purchase invoice are selected from the purchase order. For each selected receipt row, the user can change the quantity and unit price used in matching.
Matching one purchase invoice to several purchase orders. It is possible to match one purchase invoice to several different purchase orders and/or order rows of purchase orders. The posting rows from the selected purchase orders and/or order rows of purchase orders are imported into the purchase invoice.
Matching several purchase invoices to one purchase order. It is possible to match several purchase invoices to one purchase order. The order rows of a purchase invoice are selected from the purchase order. The other order rows will be matched later to the next purchase invoices associated with the purchase order. In this case, only the posting rows in line with the matching are recorded for each purchase invoice.
Partly matched refers to a situation in which only part of the rows of a purchase order are matched to a purchase invoice. In this case, the purchase order will not be marked as completely matched before the rest of its order rows are matched. It is also possible that only products of an individual order row are left unmatched for a purchase order. For example, if only a partially delivered quantity of a product is invoiced.

The matched purchase invoice can be either a debit note or a credit note. However, the purchase invoice type (debit or credit) does not control how matching works. For matching, the signs of the quantity available for matching and matched quantity are significant:

When the signs of both quantities are the same, either negative or positive, matching decreases the quantity available for matching.
When one quantity is negative and the other positive, matching cancels already matched quantities. In this case matching increases the quantity available for matching.

The Order Matching Function

Retrieving Orders

If the purchase invoice's Order Ref. field contains an order number, the application will automatically retrieve the purchase orders that match the order number and display them on the Order Matching screen. All of the purchase orders whose order numbers start with the purchase invoice's Order Ref. value are displayed.

If the Order Ref. field is empty or if no purchase orders match this order number, the application will retrieve all of the purchase orders whose status is Open and display them on the screen.

The user can search for purchase orders by order number by entering an order number or its first part in the Order Number search field and clicking Update. The user can also change suppliers by selecting the desired supplier from the Supplier selection list. The Supplier list displays all of the purchase order suppliers associated with the company of the purchase invoice.

You can filter the searched purchase orders with the options in the Matching Status dropdown menu. Purchase orders with the status Not Matched are searched for by default. The following options may be selected:

All: All purchase orders.
Not Matched: Purchase orders whose every row is completely unmatched.
Partly Matched: Purchase orders that have been matched but at least one row is completely unmatched or partly matched.
Matched: Purchase orders whose every row has been completely matched.
Overmatched: Purchase orders whose every row has been completely matched and at least one row has been overmatched.

Note: You can boost the purchase order search with the additional filtering function located right at the top of the listing. The set of purchase orders shown in the listing is filtered based on the given search criteria. Data that matches the search criteria is searched for in all the columns shown.

Selecting purchase orders for matching

The retrieved purchase orders are displayed in the list below the search fields. To open a purchase order, hover the mouse pointer on the row, which highlights the row. Click the row to display the title and row data of the selected purchase order.

The title data of the purchase order is displayed at the top. The order row data of the purchase order is displayed below the title data. If goods receipt processing is enabled, the receipts associated with each order row are displayed on separate rows below each order row.

Purchase orders and order or receipt rows may include additional information fields, i.e. input values. The additional information fields may be populated with additional information from an external ordering system that is required in matching. The fields added to the title row of the order display information imported from the ordering system, but their content cannot be edited in connection with matching. Additional information fields are established in the function Input Values.

To return to the listing of all of the purchase orders, click the arrow button in the top left corner.

Selecting Rows for Matching

There is a Matching button at the beginning of each title, order, and receipt row of the purchase order. In addition to the relevant basic data, each row displays any row-level input value fields that have been added to the purchase order. The input value fields can be editable, and the information transferred from the ordering system can also be edited during matching. This way, the edited information can also be returned into the ordering system. If an input value field is specified as mandatory, it will display a red frame if the field is empty. The input value field will also display a red frame if data is entered in incorrect format.

The row-level view is affected by the selected matching method:

When matching to order rows, the Unit Price, Net and Matched Amount fields on the order row are input fields that show by default the order's unit price and amount available for matching. You can edit the data in these fields, if the invoice's unit price and delivered amount differ from the data on the order row.
When matching to receipts, the Unit Price, Net and Matched Amount fields on each receipt row are input fields that show by default the row's unit price and amount available for matching. You can edit the data in these fields if the purchase invoice's unit price and delivered amount differ from the data on the receipt row.

The editable Unit Price, Net field is also displayed on the order row. In this case, the entered unit price is copied to all of the receipt rows associated with that order row thereby changing the unit price of several receipt rows at once. The order row input value fields support the same functionality.

Items can be selected for matching by clicking the Matching button at the title, order, or receipt row of a purchase order. The function can be repeated for several rows if several purchase orders or purchase order rows need to be matched to the same purchase invoice.

The selected rows will be shown in the Orders to be Matched section. In the start of each row there is a Cancel button in the Orders to be Matched list. It can be used to cancel the matching of the selected row, in which case the selected row will disappear from the Orders to be Matched sections. A row removed using the Cancel button can be re-selected for matching by repeating the selection for matching.

Confirming matching

The Match button marks the purchase orders in the Orders to be Matched list and their rows as matched, and returns to the purchase order posting state from the Order Matching view.

During matching, there is always an attempt to approve the purchase invoice based on the purchase order. The approval is based on a percentage or monetary amount as well as a comparison of the purchase invoice total and the total of the orders that have been matched to that purchase invoice. If the difference between the two total amounts falls within the tolerance, the invoice is approved during matching. If the difference between the total amounts is above or below the set tolerance, the invoice is sent to the standard approval workflow. The tolerance, that is used as a basis for approval, as well as the threshold values, can be defined by the supplier level in the Suppliers function, or by settings level in the Purchase Invoice Settings function.

Approving a purchase invoice during matching means that the last processing step of the purchase invoice is marked as processed, i.e. the purchase invoice status is changed to Processed. The user performing the matching does not need to have the rights to process the last processing step of purchase invoices.

The Perform matching only option specifies that, for now, the purchase invoice should not be approved during matching. In this case, the Match button marks the purchase orders in the Orders to be Matched list and their rows as matched and returns to the purchase order posting state from the Order Matching view but does not attempt to approve the purchase invoice. The Only Matching option should also be used when partly matching an invoice with the status In matching without transferring the invoice to processing for approval.

Note: If you want to force an invoice to always enter the processing for approval regardless of matching, the Purchase Invoice Matching, Approval When Matching option must be denied in the user profile. In this case, the Perform matching only is always selected automatically and the option cannot be changed.

The posting rows of the matched transactions will be imported to the purchase invoice. The Purchase Invoice Settings function is used to define whether the posting row description is retrieved from the line data or if the purchase invoice supplier name is imported as the description. If there is a posting field for which no value can be imported from the order row posting, the missing values will be searched based on the purchase invoice automatic posting logic. The posting rows created in matching cannot be removed but they can be edited. In purchase invoice posting, the rows created based on matching are indicated with the icon

The Cancel button closes the Order Matching function and returns to the purchase invoice posting screen. No changes will be saved, and the Orders to be Matched will revert back to their previous status.