Pair one by hand — transcript

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 the incoming screen from the last lesson actually had rows on it. About ten minutes. You will pair one of those supplier documents with your own purchase document and — more useful in the long run — understand exactly what the automatic pass is testing, so you stop pressing a button that was never going to work and go straight to the one that does.

Step 1 — Press Auto Match once and know what it tested

After this step you know what the button actually does. Auto Match walks the incoming supplier documents and looks for one of your purchase documents where four values agree: the supplier identity number, the reference number, the amount and the document date. All four, exactly. There is no tolerance on the amount, no window on the date, and no partial credit for three out of four. When it finds a pair it writes it to Matched History and both rows leave their queues. When it does not, no Matched History row appears, both rows stay where they were, and the screen looks exactly as it did before you pressed.

Reference: My E-Invoice Admin Applet — 7. Incoming e-invoices and reconciliation

Step 2 — Understand why it usually finds nothing

After this step you will stop pressing it a second and third time. Think about how your own purchase invoice was created. Somebody keyed it from the supplier’s paperwork, and the reference number they typed is very unlikely to be the supplier’s own reference character for character. One sen of rounding between their total and yours is enough to miss. One day of difference between their document date and the date you booked it is enough to miss. Those three things are ordinary, not errors, and any one of them defeats an exact four-value test. Pressing Auto Match again changes none of them. It is listed in the guide’s common mistakes for exactly that reason.

Reference: Incoming Supplier E-Invoices — Common mistakes

Step 3 — Pair the two documents yourself

After this step you have made a pair the automatic pass would never have made. Open the row in PD Matching Q. — your purchase document, not the supplier’s — go to its Match Incoming Doc tab, press the plus button, choose the supplier’s document on the screen that opens and press Match. The operation is trivial. The judgement is not. Manual matching exists so a person can pair what an exact four-value test missed: a reference number written differently, a date a day out. But it is not a licence to match across money. If their total differs from yours, find out why before you pair them. Fifty sen is usually rounding. Sometimes it is not.

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

Step 4 — Confirm it landed, and know how to undo it

After this step you can correct a mistake without asking anyone. The pair moves to Reconciliation, Purchase, Matched History, and both original rows disappear from their queues — which is the confirmation you are looking for, since a purchase still sitting in PD Matching Q. was not matched whatever the toast said. If you paired the wrong two documents, Pushback to Queues on Matched History puts both rows back exactly where they came from, and nothing is destroyed. Get into the habit of checking Matched History after a pairing session rather than trusting the message on the screen.

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

Step 5 — Remember what the pair did not do

After this step you will not close the month one document short. A match records that you checked. It posts nothing, changes no document status, touches no tax and writes no journal line. So a purchase invoice that is matched here is still an unposted purchase invoice if nobody approved and posted it, and your payables are no different than they were five minutes ago. Keep the two jobs in separate parts of your routine: the purchase invoice is booked and posted in its own applet on its own schedule, and this reconciliation is the evidence trail that sits beside it.

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

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Press Auto Match once and know what it tested"]
  s2["Step 2 — Understand why it usually finds nothing"]
  s3["Step 3 — Pair the two documents yourself"]
  s4["Step 4 — Confirm it landed, and know how to undo it"]
  s5["Step 5 — Remember what the pair did not do"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  

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.

Next: Check the rest yourself, and clear the list · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation