When it does not agree, and the matching you cannot see — transcript

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

This presentation is for a supplier whose figures and their customer’s have stopped agreeing. In about ten minutes you will know which document to look at for which kind of disagreement, one screen that will show you something before it is real, and one piece of matching inside your customer’s system that you should never wait on.

Step 1 — Tell the two kinds of disagreement apart

After this step you will stop treating one problem as the other. A quantity disagreement and a price disagreement end up in different documents. If your customer believes fewer goods arrived, or wants goods sent back, they raise a purchase return, and it is about things. If the quantity is agreed but the money is not, they raise a purchase credit note, and it is about value. Both have their own screen in your portal. Knowing which one appeared tells you what your customer thinks the problem is, before anybody has written a sentence about it, and it is usually a faster answer than the e-mail thread.

Reference: Purchase Return Supplier Access (Internal) — Overview

Step 2 — Handle the return screen with care

After this step you will avoid the one trap in this portal. The return screen does not filter on finalised documents the way the others do. It lists by record status alone, so you can see a return your customer is still drafting and one they have discarded and forgotten. Quantities on a draft can still change, and a discarded return is not a return at all. So read the posting status on the document before you ship a replacement, issue a credit or adjust anything on your side. Two other things about this screen: it has no linked-documents tab, and its PDF export cannot be made to work.

Reference: Purchase Return Supplier Access (Internal) — Troubleshooting

Step 3 — Read the credit note as the settlement

After this step you will know which document is the money. The credit note is the one that reduces what your customer owes you, and unlike the return screen it shows you nothing until they have finalised it — no drafts, no discarded notes. Its line grid carries the item, the quantity and the amount credited, and its own tabs show what has been settled against it and any offsets recorded. Every export button on this screen is switched off in the template, so if you need the document itself, ask your customer to send it.

Reference: Purchase Credit Note Supplier Access (Internal) — Overview

Step 4 — Learn what your invoice starts that you never see

After this step you will know a mechanism exists and that it is not yours to watch. When your customer finalises their record of your invoice, and their company has Malaysian e-invoicing switched on, and your supplier record carries a tax identification number, their system quietly writes a row into a matching pool. That row holds their reference, the date, the amount and your tax number, and waits for an electronic copy of your e-invoice to turn up so the two can be paired. No supplier login can open that pool. There is no screen for it in your portal, and nothing in your portal reflects whether anything was ever paired.

Reference: Purchase Invoice Supplier Access (Internal) — What happens to this invoice that the portal never shows

Step 5 — Know why that pairing almost never happens

After this step you will not treat it as a channel. Two conditions have to hold. Your e-invoice has to reach your customer electronically, over the Peppol network or through their e-mail scanning intake; a document filed with the revenue board and sent to your customer as an ordinary attachment never arrives there at all. And four values have to agree exactly, with no tolerance: your tax number, the reference number, the amount and the document date. A reference keyed by hand rarely matches yours character for character. So most rows wait indefinitely, which is their normal state and not a fault.

Reference: Incoming Supplier E-Invoices — Step 3: Pair a supplier document with your purchase document

Step 6 — Send the thing that actually proves it

After this step you will know what your customer really needs from you. Pairing is only a record that somebody checked; it posts nothing, changes no status, moves no tax and can be undone, so your invoice is exactly as real and as payable either way. What your customer’s accounts team has to file is your validated e-invoice itself — the document carrying the revenue board’s identifier and its code. Send it the way you always have, alongside the invoice, and say which purchase order it belongs to. That is the evidence. The pool is their housekeeping, not your delivery channel.

Reference: Incoming Supplier E-Invoices — Step 3: Pair a supplier document with your purchase document

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.

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