Purchase Order vs Invoice Matching: A €44 Worked Example

Two-way matching compares the invoice with the purchase order. It can reveal price and quantity exceptions, but it cannot prove that goods arrived or that payment is safe.

By RFQ Desk project team · Published 19 September 2026 · Fictional examples, reproducible calculations

One invoice, two different exceptions

The fictional PO orders 300 bottles at €2.50 and 100 lids at €0.40. The current invoice bills 220 bottles at €2.70 and 100 lids at €0.40. An earlier invoice already billed 100 bottles.

Check	Calculation	Finding
Current bottle price	220 × (€2.70 − €2.50)	€44 price variance
Cumulative bottle quantity	100 prior + 220 current − 300 ordered	20 units above the PO
Current invoice arithmetic	220 × €2.70 + 100 × €0.40	€634, matching its stated total

A mathematically correct invoice can still disagree with the purchase order. The €44 is a calculated price exception, not money that has been recovered.

Reproduce it in TradeCheck

Download the source JSON or choose the fictional example in TradeCheck.
Confirm PO ID, invoice PO reference, supplier, currency, line references and units.
Run the review and inspect exceptions together with their source references.
Export the evidence report or an unsent supplier question draft.

The local MCP exposes the same deterministic review. Read the MCP installation guide before connecting it to your assistant.

Missing history is not a clean result

Without the earlier 100-unit invoice, the current 220 units alone do not exceed 300. If the history is unknown, the report must preserve that gap. Do not turn an empty list of known prior invoices into a claim that no prior invoices exist. Source references are labels supplied by the caller; the tool has not independently read a PDF.

Two-way versus three-way matching

Three-way matching adds goods-receipt evidence. TradeCheck performs two-way checks only: it does not read receipts, authenticate suppliers, check a bank-account change or approve payments. A clean arithmetic result still needs the organization's receipt and approval process.

Starting with an Excel export?

The browser importer accepts CSV, TSV and pasted table rows with explicit column mapping. Review the preview, enter invoice totals and confirm the extraction. It does not perform OCR. See the table import guide for required fields.