Matching Supplier Invoices Against Deliveries

Summary

The matching dashboard at Finance > Purchases > Matching shows how your scanned supplier invoices pair up against your confirmed deliveries, line by line. Matching runs automatically whenever you confirm an invoice or a delivery. The dashboard surfaces the results in three tabs: pairs that matched, pairs that need your review, and lines with no partner at all. Quantity and price mismatches are badged so you can take them up with the supplier.

Prerequisites

• You have the finance.purchases.match_review capability to view the dashboard. Owners, managers, and service advisors have it.
• Confirming, rejecting, and manually pairing requires finance.purchases.match_manage. Owners and managers have it; service advisors see the dashboard read-only.
• Your garage scans purchase invoices and delivery notes and confirms them. See Scanning purchase invoices and Scanning delivery notes.

Steps

Open the dashboard

1. Navigate to Finance > Purchases > Matching.
2. The header shows per-tab counts and value totals for the period. Where delivery lines carry no price, the total is honest about it (for example “£480 + 12 unpriced lines”).

Understand the three tabs

1. Matched - invoice and delivery lines paired automatically or by hand. Pairs with a quantity or price difference stay visible here with a “Qty mismatch” or “Price mismatch” badge, so a confirmed match never hides a discrepancy.
2. Needs review - pairs the matching engine proposes but is not certain about. Confirm or reject each one.
3. Unmatched - lines with no partner, in two groups:
   • Billed, no delivery recorded - invoice lines with no matching delivery. The supplier has charged you for something you have no record of receiving.
   • Delivered, no invoice recorded - delivery lines with no matching invoice. Recent ones (under 30 days) sit collapsed under Awaiting invoice, since suppliers often bill in arrears. Older ones appear under Overdue - no invoice recorded and are worth chasing.

Read a row

1. Each row shows the part, the supplier, the invoice reference and delivery reference (both linked to the source documents), and the quantities and unit prices on each side.
2. When a delivery line has no price, the price shows ”-” with an info icon. Parts deliveries often do not show prices; that is normal.
3. On a phone, rows display as cards with a two-column Invoice and Delivery comparison.

Confirm a proposed pair

1. Open the Needs review tab.
2. Check the two lines describe the same parts.
3. Click Confirm. The helper text explains: confirming records that these are the same parts. Any price difference stays flagged so you can take it up with the supplier.

Reject a proposed pair

1. Click Reject on the pair.
2. A confirmation dialog warns: “This invoice line and delivery line won’t be suggested as a pair again. You can still pair them manually later.”
3. Confirm to reject.

Pair lines manually

1. Open the Unmatched tab and find the invoice line.
2. Click the manual pair action. A picker lists unpaired confirmed delivery lines, sorted by how close their date is to the invoice date.
3. Pick the matching delivery line to create the pair.

Re-run matching

1. Matching runs automatically whenever you confirm an invoice or delivery, so you rarely need this.
2. To re-check everything now, click Run matching. A toast confirms: “Matching started - results will appear shortly.”

Expected Outcome

• Every scanned invoice line is accounted for: matched to a delivery, awaiting your review, or flagged as having no delivery on record.
• Price and quantity discrepancies are visible even on matched pairs, giving you an evidence trail for supplier queries.

Troubleshooting

Problem: The action buttons are missing and a note reads “Read-only - ask a manager to confirm or reject pairs.” Cause: Your role has finance.purchases.match_review but not finance.purchases.match_manage. Fix: Ask an owner or manager to action the pairs, or to grant your role the manage capability.

Problem: A delivery I know was invoiced sits under “Delivered, no invoice recorded”. Cause: The invoice was not scanned, or its lines did not match (different part numbers, bundled lines). Fix: Check the invoice exists under Purchase invoices. If it does, pair the lines manually.

Problem: Lots of recent deliveries show as unmatched. Cause: Suppliers commonly invoice in arrears. Deliveries under 30 days old are expected to be unmatched and sit collapsed under “Awaiting invoice”. Fix: None needed. They move to “Overdue” if no invoice arrives within 30 days.

Problem: I rejected a pair by mistake. Cause: Rejection is permanent for the automatic engine. Fix: Pair the two lines manually from the Unmatched tab. Manual pairing always works regardless of past rejections.

Permissions

Action	Required capability
View the matching dashboard	finance.purchases.match_review
Confirm, reject, manually pair, re-run matching	finance.purchases.match_manage

Notes

• Matching covers invoices and deliveries recorded since your garage started using the scanning workflows. Older paperwork is not back-filled.
• Each invoice line pairs with a single delivery line. Credit notes are not yet part of matching.
• Tax differences are not compared yet; only quantity and unit price.