Invoice reconciliation is the check that a vendor invoice agrees with the documents behind it, such as the purchase order, the receipt and the contract, before anyone pays it, and that the payment agrees with the bank. Invoice reconciliation software runs that comparison on each invoice and sends the ones that disagree to a person.
In Rever, Matcher runs the comparison and Investigator works the exceptions. Matcher ties each bill to its order, receipt or acceptance and contract terms field by field, then reconciles the approved bill to the payment allocation and the bank debit. An invoice that does not tie out goes to Investigator, who reads the amendment, change order or quotation behind it and settles the cause before payment proceeds.
What invoice reconciliation software compares
An exact-amount match tells you little. Two invoices for the same total can bill different services, and an invoice can match its purchase order to the cent while the receipt shows half the goods arrived. Software that reconciles invoices has to compare fields.
- Scope and quantity: the description, SKU, units, hours or milestones billed against what the order specified and the receipt recorded.
- Price: unit rates, discounts, credits, taxes and freight recomputed from the contract terms in force on the invoice date.
- Dates: delivery, service, invoice and due dates, and whether the invoice lands in the right period.
- Identity: the vendor's legal name, entity and payment references, and whether the bank details match the vendor master.
- Settlement: the payment allocation and the bank debit, so a paid invoice reconciles to cash.
Matcher works through each of these and records which fields agree, which differ within tolerance and which it could not assess. Rever's Matcher page puts the rule in one line: "Amount equality alone never makes a match." Matcher also handles partial deliveries, instalments and consolidated invoices without using the same receipt twice, and it refers a bank-detail difference to Sentinel.
Two-, three- and four-way matching
A two-way match compares the invoice with the purchase order on quantity and price. Teams use it for services and subscriptions, where no goods arrive to receive. A three-way match adds the receiving record, so you pay only for what arrived. A four-way match adds an inspection or acceptance record, for goods that have to pass a quality check before the company accepts them.
The Rever blog post What is a 3-way match defines the three-document check in full, and the controllers' edition covers three-way match exceptions line by line. In Rever, the legs of a match are evidence roles, and a leg can hold several linked records. Investigator adds a fourth or fifth document, such as an amendment or a change order, when the first three disagree.
Tolerances and the waiver
A tolerance is the gap between invoice and order that your team accepts without review, set as an amount, a percentage or both. One tolerance for every vendor fails in both directions. Set it tight and a freight carrier's routine surcharges flood the exception queue; set it loose and you pay a fixed-price supplier's drift without a review. Teams that hold tolerances per vendor, or per vendor category, review the invoices that need it and pay the rest on time.
Watch for the waiver. Under payment-run pressure, someone widens a tolerance or approves past it, and no one records why. The next auditor sees an exception that cleared with no reason attached.
In Rever, you set Matcher's tolerances in its thresholds: value, quantity, rate, date and rounding, with confidence requirements and timing windows. Those settings never remove a transaction from the agreed in-scope population, and a similarity score cannot waive a contractual condition or a mandatory approval.
An exception, worked
This is an illustrative case, not a customer result. A FreightCo invoice lands at $4,812 against purchase order PO-1884 for $4,502. Matcher finds the $310 gap outside tolerance and hands the invoice to Investigator.
Investigator reads amendment A2, signed 28 June, which adds $240 of fuel surcharge, and finds a short shipment that credits $180. The order plus the surcharge, less the credit, comes to $4,562. Journal drafts the entry: match $4,562 and accrue $250, an accrual that reverses on settlement. The $310 reads as $240 of surcharge, less the $180 short shipment, plus the $250 accrual.
Your approver reviews the case in the Inbox with the amendment, the invoice and the receipt attached, and approves the entry. Journal hands it back as an import file your team loads. Journal entry automation, with approval first covers the accrual and its reversal.
What stays with your team
Matcher does not amend source documents, pay vendors, create invoices or post corrections. Approval, explanation, missing-document and dispute requests go to your Inbox, and payments follow your approval process. Rever's accounts payable page shows where Spend Guard, Entitlement and Sentinel join Matcher on the payables side, and the accounts payable audit checklist lists the checks that run on paid invoices.
