Your supplier invoices are matched by hand, or not at all

Three documents to reconcile, dozens of times a week: when time runs short, invoices get approved unchecked and price discrepancies slip through.

Thirty minutes, no commitment

Describe your flow. I'll tell you what can be automated and where I would start.

The invoice arrives by email. Someone ought to check that it corresponds to a purchase order, that the quantities invoiced are the ones actually received, and that the unit price is the one negotiated. In theory that is three-way matching. In practice, in a manufacturing SME, it is one person glancing at the total, vaguely recalling the order, and approving.

That is not negligence: a serious check takes five to eight minutes per invoice, and nobody has those hours. The result is that the company pays what it is asked to pay.

What it looks like in your shop

The delivery note is signed at the bay and disappears

It gets signed by the first person available, sometimes without a real count, then left on a desk. Two weeks later, when the invoice arrives, it has to be found. If it is missing, the invoice is approved anyway because the goods are obviously there.

Partial deliveries are not tracked

Order for 500 pieces, delivery of 300, invoice for 500. The discrepancy is perfectly detectable if receipts are recorded line by line — and perfectly invisible otherwise. It is the most common discrepancy and the easiest to miss.

The invoiced price is not the negotiated price

A year-end rebate not applied, a price the supplier never updated, a cutting or transport surcharge added without agreement. Each one is small. Repeated across hundreds of lines, they add up to sums well beyond the cost of an automation project.

Invoices sit, then get paid in a rush

The supplier chases, sometimes blocks an order, and the invoice is paid without checking to unblock things. Early-payment discounts are never captured along the way, for lack of knowing soon enough what is approvable.

Peppol fixed the format, not the checking

Since 1 January 2026, structured electronic invoicing has been mandatory between Belgian VAT-registered businesses for domestic B2B. Many managing directors assume the subject is closed: it isn't. Peppol guarantees the invoice arrives in a machine-readable format. It checks neither that the quantity invoiced matches what you received, nor that the price is the one negotiated. The format is solved, the checking is untouched — and it is now far easier to automate.

Nobody knows what is committed but not yet invoiced

At month end, the value of goods ordered and received but not invoiced is an estimate. Your accountant makes a provision by feel, and your three-month cash view suffers for it.

What it actually costs

This is the subject where the arithmetic is most direct, because the unit is the euro rather than the hour.

Processing time per invoice: 5 to 8 minutes if checked properlyCount your monthly volume of purchase invoices. Between 200 and 400 a month, that is half an administrative post spent comparing numbers.
Undetected price discrepancies: 0.5 to 2% of the purchases concernedCheckable in your own books right now: take fifty invoice lines at random over the last six months and compare them to the purchase order price. That one-hour exercise is usually enough to decide on the project.
Discounts not captured: 1 to 2% with suppliers who offer themA 2% discount at 10 days is a return very few investments match. It is lost purely because approval comes too late.
Reliability of the month-end provision: manual estimateThe cost is not accounting, it is decision-making: you steer cash on an approximate figure.

Run the numbers on your own purchases: on a two-million-euro spend, one percent of undetected discrepancies is twenty thousand euros a year. It is the only project on this list whose return can be demonstrated without arguing about hours saved.

How it gets fixed

The principle is simple: the computer compares, the human arbitrates the exceptions. Not the other way round, as today.

1. Receipts are recorded at the bay, line by line
This is the missing link in most SMEs and it is the precondition for everything else. A screen at the stores, the purchase order on display, you record what actually arrived. Thirty seconds, at the moment the goods are in front of you and a discrepancy can still be raised with the driver.
2. The invoice is read automatically
Supplier, order number, lines, quantities, unit prices and VAT are extracted. Structured invoices — Peppol, e-invoicing — are handled natively and cleanly; ordinary PDFs go through extraction, with a confidence level displayed.
3. Three-way matching runs automatically
Order, receipt, invoice. Anything matching within the tolerance you set goes through for approval untouched. Anything that doesn't stops, with the discrepancy stated plainly: « 200 invoiced, 180 received » or « unit price €4.20 instead of €3.95 ». Your accountant handles ten exceptions instead of three hundred invoices.
4. What is committed becomes permanently visible
Orders placed, receipts made, invoices received, invoices approved: four states, one screen, up to date. The month-end provision becomes a reading rather than an estimate.

This is the project that produces the first result stated in euros, which often helps get the following ones accepted internally.

What this does not fix

What this does not fix:

It does not replace your accountant or your accounting firm. It takes the mechanical comparison off them and leaves them the exceptions, which is the part requiring judgement.
It does not work without recorded goods receipts. If delivery notes are not entered, there is nothing to match, and that step has to be accepted by the stores before we start. That is the real hard point of the project, and it is human, not technical.
Overhead invoices with no purchase order — energy, insurance, telecoms — match against nothing. They can be filed and routed for approval, not checked automatically.
It does not recover past years' discrepancies. If you want to quantify the past, that is a separate one-off analysis, which I can do, but it is not this project.
It does not make you compliant with electronic invoicing obligations on your behalf; it prepares you by handling structured formats natively.

The questions I get asked

What does it cost?

The two-day audit is €1,500. A supplier-invoice project generally lands between €9,000 and €13,000 fixed price depending on the number of suppliers and the state of your receiving process.

How long before it runs?

Three to four weeks. The technical part is short; the part that takes time is establishing goods receipt recording in the stores.

Do we need to change our accounting package?

No. Approved invoices go out to your accounting tool or your accounting firm in the format they already use. I check that with your accountant during the audit, before committing to anything.

Does it handle electronic invoicing and Peppol?

Yes, and it is simpler than a PDF: a structured invoice does not have to be guessed at, it is read directly. Since some invoices still arrive by other routes — foreign suppliers, exempt cases, expenses — the setup handles both worlds in parallel, without a double process.

E-invoicing has been mandatory since 2026 — does that solve our problem?

No, and it is the most common misunderstanding since it came into force. The obligation concerns the exchange format: since 1 January 2026, B2B invoices between businesses established in Belgium must be issued and received as structured electronic invoices, compliant with the European EN 16931 standard, over the Peppol network. That solves transmission. It says nothing about verification. A perfectly compliant Peppol invoice can still bill you for 500 pieces when you received 300. Three-way matching remains entirely to be done — the good news being that a structured invoice is far easier to check automatically than a PDF.

Are we covered by that obligation?

If you are VAT-registered and established in Belgium, yes, for domestic B2B transactions — with no size or volume threshold. B2C is out of scope, and a few exceptions exist, notably the small-business flat-rate scheme, which is being phased out. Near-real-time VAT reporting is also announced for around 2028. Check your exact position with your accountant: I look at the process, not at your tax status.

What happens with the discrepancies found?

They appear in a queue with the reason. You set the tolerance below which nothing is blocked — often a few euros, because stopping an invoice over €1.20 costs more than the discrepancy.

Does our accounting data leave the company?

Not by default. If PDF extraction requires an external service, I tell you the vendor and the hosting location, and propose the in-house alternative where one exists.

What if you're no longer available?

The code, documentation and credentials are with you. On a flow that touches payments, that is a baseline requirement and it is contractual.

Let's talk for thirty minutes

You describe your flow, I tell you what can be automated, what cannot, and where I would start. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so during the call.