paying suppliers
Purchase-to-pay.
We run your supplier invoices from inbox to ledger: captured from any format, matched to the purchase order and goods receipt, statements reconciled, and every mismatch chased with the supplier until it’s settled. Rules post what matches; anything the agent resolves waits for your approval.
For finance teams in manufacturing, distribution and logistics whose supplier invoices grow with revenue, and whose statements nobody has reconciled since March.
From purchase order to payment.
Six documents have to agree before a supplier is paid. Here is what each one must match, and what happens when it doesn’t.
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Purchase order
What you agreed to buy; the anchor everything else is matched against.
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Delivery note and goods receipt
What actually arrived. Must agree with the purchase order on quantity.
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Supplier invoice
What they charge. Must agree with the purchase order and the receipt at line level, within the tolerances you set.
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Credit note
The correction when they don’t agree. Must settle the difference on the invoice it belongs to.
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Supplier statement
Their view of your account, every month. Every line must appear in your ledger.
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The correspondence
The query that turns an exception into a credit note or a copy invoice, kept with the document it belongs to.
Rules record. AI resolves. People approve.
What rules handle.
- Duplicate detection before anything else, on supplier, number, amount and date.
- Three-way matching of every invoice against its purchase order and goods receipt, at line level, within the price and quantity tolerances you set. What matches flows straight through.
- Supplier statement reconciliation: every line of every statement checked against the ledger, so the invoices you don’t have and the credits you haven’t taken surface before the supplier chases. It is usually the first process we take on.
- Carrier and haulage invoices matched line by line against jobs, deliveries and rate cards.
- Patterns that prove reliable are promoted to rules, so the share that needs the agent shrinks over time.
What the AI resolves.
- Intake from any format. Invoices arrive by email, scan or upload, and the agent extracts supplier, line items, amounts and tax. No templates, and no manual data entry.
- Exceptions the match can’t clear. A price variance, a quantity mismatch, a short shipment, an over-delivery or a substitution: the agent searches item bridges, checks supplier history and past resolutions, applies your policies, and recommends a resolution with the evidence it relied on.
- Invoices with no purchase order. Where there is no purchase order, for service invoices among others, the agent predicts the GL coding from the supplier, the line description and your posting history.
- A possible duplicate. An invoice that isn’t an exact copy but looks like one: the agent compares it with what has been posted and paid, and holds it for a decision.
- Credits and statements. A credit promised, not received is chased until it arrives; an invoice never received is requested as a copy; a credit not taken is matched and applied.
- The correspondence. Querying a credit note, chasing a missing goods receipt or requesting a copy of an invoice on the statement: routine requests like these go out automatically, inside the invoice thread, so every message stays with the transaction.
What people approve.
- Every resolution the agent recommends, with its reasoning and evidence, before it posts.
- Any message that disputes an invoice or accepts a supplier’s price or terms, before it goes out.
- Budget-holder sign-off on non-PO spend, looped in from the invoice thread.
- Changes to tolerances and rules, which are versioned.
Measured on your documents, not quoted from someone else’s.
- The proportion of invoices that record without a person touching them.
- How long an exception takes to resolve, and which suppliers cause the gap.
- Statements reconciled each month, and the open differences by age.
Invoice 4478, short-shipped.
- Rule Twelve invoices arrive. Eleven match PO and goods receipt within tolerance and post. Invoice 4478 is €212.40 short against PO 8819, so it does not post.
- Agent Reads delivery note 3318, finds two cartons short-shipped, emails the supplier for a credit note (a routine request, sent automatically), and when CN-1194 arrives recommends: match the invoice with the credit note and post.
- Person A named person reviews the evidence and approves. Only then does it reach the ledger.
We don’t replace your ledger.
- Your ERP, read and written through its API where one exists and through its user interface where it doesn’t: SAP Business One, Sage and Exchequer deepest; NetSuite and Business Central in production; others integrated.
- Mailboxes and documents: Microsoft 365, Graph, Outlook, SharePoint, OCR.
- Structured e-invoicing through a certified Peppol provider.
- Multiple entities, currencies and tax jurisdictions, including cross-border VAT.
Start with your supplier statements.
Thirty minutes, your process, no slides. You leave with a next meeting booked, or a clear reason we’re not the right fit.