What you are reconciling, and what you are not — transcript

Presentation 1 of 7 in Reconcile supplier e-invoices against your purchase documents · about 9 minutes · for the whole-system operator — you run the books.

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This lesson is for you if you run the books at GadgetSphere and somebody has started asking whether the purchases in your ledger have supplier e-invoices behind them. Before you open a single screen, it is worth about nine minutes settling what this job actually is, because two other jobs share its vocabulary and one of them is not even in the same module. By the end you will know what the reconciliation proves, what it cannot prove, and why none of it moves a cent in your accounts.

Step 1 — Name the question you are answering

After this step you can say in one sentence what the whole exercise is for. Sooner or later somebody asks you to prove that every purchase sitting in your books has a validated supplier e-invoice behind it. That is the question. GadgetSphere buys from around one thousand two hundred suppliers, and about twenty authorised distributors account for the overwhelming majority of what it spends. That shape is what makes the job possible at all: you check the big suppliers properly, and you spot-check the long tail. If you go into this expecting to verify twelve hundred relationships every month, you will give up in week one and the answer will still be no.

Reference: A supplier sent us an e-invoice. What do we do with it? Incoming supplier e-invoices — Meet GadgetSphere

Step 2 — Accept that none of this touches your accounts

After this step you will stop looking for a ledger effect that is not there. Pairing a supplier’s e-invoice with your purchase document posts nothing. It does not change the document’s status, does not touch tax, does not create a journal line, and does not move a supplier balance. Nothing on the matching screens posts to the general ledger; in this applet only an approved cancellation of your own e-invoice reaches your books, through the document it voids or reverses. A pair is a record that you checked, but it is not one you can cleanly take back: Pushback does not return a hand-made pair as it was. So treat Match as final and compare the pair before you press it. And matching is not a substitute for approving and posting the purchase invoice properly — that is a separate job, in a separate applet, and it still has to happen.

Reference: Supplier e-invoices: see what arrives, and pair it with your purchase — What Matched History records, and what Pushback gives back

Step 3 — Tell a matching queue from a submission queue

After this step a screen full of untouched rows will stop worrying you. You already know submission queues from your own e-invoicing: a document sits there on its way to LHDN and it moves on its own, and a row that has not moved for days is a problem. A matching queue is the opposite kind of thing. It holds a row that is waiting for a counterpart to turn up, and if no counterpart ever turns up, it waits forever. That is the normal, expected state, not a fault and not a backlog you caused. Read the word queue here as worklist, and you will treat these screens correctly from the first day.

Reference: A supplier sent us an e-invoice. What do we do with it? Incoming supplier e-invoices — What you need to know first

Step 4 — Tell it from three-way matching

After this step you will not go looking for purchase orders on these screens. Comparing a purchase order against a goods received note against a supplier invoice is three-way matching, it is a purchasing job, and it lives in the purchasing guides. What you are doing here is narrower and it is a tax job: pairing your purchase document with your supplier’s e-invoice, as two records of the same transaction for the Inland Revenue Board — LHDN. Same supplier, same money, entirely different question. There is in fact a second console in BigLedger that does compare delivery orders and goods receipts against supplier invoices, and it is a separate subject with separate screens. Lesson six tells you which one your suppliers land in.

Reference: A supplier sent us an e-invoice. What do we do with it? Incoming supplier e-invoices — What you need to know first

Step 5 — Set your expectations before you open anything

After this step you will not spend a month waiting for a screen to fill. BigLedger does not match the e-invoices your suppliers filed only with the Inland Revenue Board. Incoming matching only ever sees documents that reached BigLedger through a delivery channel, and a supplier outside that group files with the board, then sends you an ordinary PDF or a piece of paper, exactly as before. For such a supplier, nothing in BigLedger pairs the supplier’s e-invoice with your purchase. A background run may come to list it under External Reception, once BigLedger points that run at production rather than the test system, but even then nothing matches it to your books. The manual check later in this course is not a fallback for a few awkward cases. For a business like GadgetSphere it is the main event.

Reference: A supplier sent us an e-invoice. What do we do with it? Incoming supplier e-invoices

Step 6 — Get the three prerequisites in place

After this step you can start the next lesson without being blocked halfway through it. Three things. First, you can open the My E-Invoice Admin Applet and its left menu shows both External Reception and Reconciliation, Purchase — if either group is missing, an applet setting is hiding it and whoever administers the applet can restore it. Second, last month’s purchase invoices are finalised, because a purchase document still in draft has entered no part of the e-invoice pipeline and will appear nowhere. Third, your supplier records carry a tax number wherever the supplier has one. That third item decides far more than it looks like it should, and the next lesson shows you why.

Reference: A supplier sent us an e-invoice. What do we do with it? Incoming supplier e-invoices — Before you start

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Name the question you are answering"]
  s2["Step 2 — Accept that none of this touches your accounts"]
  s3["Step 3 — Tell a matching queue from a submission queue"]
  s4["Step 4 — Tell it from three-way matching"]
  s5["Step 5 — Set your expectations before you open anything"]
  s6["Step 6 — Get the three prerequisites in place"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

1. You pair a supplier's e-invoice with your purchase invoice. What happens in the general ledger? The purchase invoice is posted and the supplier balance updates
Nothing — matching posts nothing, changes no status and creates no journal
The tax on the purchase is recalculated from the supplier's document

2. A row has been sitting in a matching queue untouched for two months. What does that mean? A processor has stalled and support should be asked to restart it
It is waiting for a counterpart that may never arrive, which is the normal state
The purchase document was never finalised

3. Which supplier e-invoices can BigLedger pair with your purchases? Every e-invoice your suppliers filed with the Inland Revenue Board
Only documents that reached BigLedger through a delivery channel
Every e-invoice from a supplier whose record carries a tax number

4. Last month's purchase invoices are still in draft. Where do they appear in this reconciliation? Nowhere — a draft purchase document has entered no part of the e-invoice pipeline
In the matching queue, flagged as draft
In External Reception until they are finalised

Answer key

Nothing — matching posts nothing, changes no status and creates no journal — Supplier e-invoices: see what arrives, and pair it with your purchase — What Matched History records, and what Pushback gives back
It is waiting for a counterpart that may never arrive, which is the normal state — A supplier sent us an e-invoice. What do we do with it? Incoming supplier e-invoices — What you need to know first
Only documents that reached BigLedger through a delivery channel — A supplier sent us an e-invoice. What do we do with it? Incoming supplier e-invoices
Nowhere — a draft purchase document has entered no part of the e-invoice pipeline — A supplier sent us an e-invoice. What do we do with it? Incoming supplier e-invoices — Before you start

This is a self-check. Your answers are marked in your browser and stay there — nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is recorded, and the marking is readable in the page source, so it is not a credential. Open the answer key at any time.

Next: The list of purchases that should have one · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation

Last updated on October 26, 2026

What you are reconciling, and what you are not The list of purchases that should have one