Finance chasing procurement for purchase orders and missing paperwork? Here is why it happens and how automated three-way matching stops it for good.
Quick summary
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Finance teams chase procurement because the three documents both teams rely on, the purchase order, the goods received note and the purchase invoice, sit in separate systems, spreadsheets and inboxes, so every mismatch becomes a cross-team enquiry. The cost is measurable: the average accounts payable team takes 9.2 days and spends USD 9.40 to process a single invoice, and invoice exceptions are now the top challenge for 53 per cent of teams (Ardent Partners, 2025). The fix is structural rather than behavioural: run the full procure-to-pay cycle in one workflow where the purchase order anchors every document, goods received notes are logged at the point of delivery, and automated three-way matching flags only genuine discrepancies. Summit does exactly this, giving finance and procurement one shared record with customisable approvals and a full audit trail, so nobody has to chase anyone. |
Every finance team knows the ritual. A purchase invoice arrives and nobody can find the purchase order behind it. The payment run closes tomorrow, so someone in finance messages procurement. Then operations. Then the outlet manager who signed for the delivery. By the time the answers trickle back, the payment run has closed without the invoice, the supplier is calling to ask where their money is, and two teams that should be partners are quietly blaming each other.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: finance does not chase procurement because either team is careless. Finance chases procurement because the three documents both teams depend on, the purchase order, the goods received note and the purchase invoice, live in different places. One sits in an enterprise resource planning system or a spreadsheet, one sits in a filing tray or a photo on someone’s phone, and one sits in the accounting software. When the record is fragmented, every question becomes a message, a call or an email.
This article breaks down why the chasing happens, what it actually costs, and the practical steps to stop it for good.
What chasing procurement actually looks like
If any of these feel familiar, you are living the problem:
- Purchase invoices arrive with no purchase order reference, and finance emails around to work out who bought what, and whether it was ever approved.
- Accounts payable staff check invoice line items against purchase orders and delivery paperwork one row at a time.
- Payment runs stall while approvers are chased over email, chat and shoulder taps.
- Month-end closes throw up commitments finance never knew existed until the invoice landed.
- Suppliers call finance for payment status because nobody inside the business can answer with confidence.
Each symptom looks like a people problem. None of them is. They are all downstream of the same structural gap between the purchasing process and the payment process.
Why finance ends up chasing procurement
1. The purchase order lives where finance cannot see it
Procurement raises purchase orders in an enterprise resource planning system, an inventory tool or a spreadsheet. Finance processes purchase invoices in accounting software. The two systems rarely talk to each other, so when an invoice arrives, matching it to an order means asking a human. That is the chase in its purest form.
2. Nobody records what actually arrived
The goods received note is the most neglected document in the entire procure-to-pay cycle. Deliveries get signed off on paper dockets, photographed into a shared drive, or not recorded at all. Without a reliable record of what arrived, finance cannot verify what was billed against what was actually received, so they ask the person who took the delivery. Days pass. Memories fade.
3. Matching happens last, and by hand
In most businesses, checking the purchase order against the goods received note and the purchase invoice happens at the very end of the process, line by line, in the week payment is due. Discrepancies such as inaccurate pricing, quantities billed that exceed what was received, or charges that never appeared on the order surface weeks after delivery, when they are hardest to resolve.
4. Approvals route by memory, not rules
When nobody has formalised who approves what, everything escalates upward by default. Senior managers become the bottleneck, invoices queue behind their calendars, and finance spends its afternoons sending polite reminders.
5. The two teams answer different questions
Procurement is measured on keeping the business supplied on time and on budget. Finance is measured on control, accuracy and a clean close. Both are doing their jobs well by their own scoreboard, but neither can see the other’s half of the process. Misalignment is baked into the structure, not the people.
What all that chasing costs
The numbers are well documented. Ardent Partners’ Accounts Payable Metrics That Matter in 2025 benchmarks 212 accounts payable and finance teams, and the findings read like a bill for all that chasing:
- The average team takes 9.2 days to process a single invoice. Best-in-class teams take 3.1 days, while everyone else averages 17.4 days.
- Processing one invoice costs an average of USD 9.40. Best-in-class teams pay USD 2.78 per invoice, while the rest pay USD 12.88, roughly 80 per cent more.
- 14 per cent of invoices become exceptions requiring manual intervention, and invoice exceptions now rank as the top challenge in the industry, cited by 53 per cent of teams, ahead of slow approvals at 41 per cent.
- Accounts payable staff spend 21.8 per cent of their time answering supplier enquiries, most of which boil down to one question: where is my payment?
Scale matters here. For a food and beverage group taking daily deliveries across 10 or more outlets, each outlet generates its own goods received notes every single day. Matching those manually against purchase orders and purchase invoices at head office is not just tedious. Past a certain purchasing volume it becomes unmanageable, and unmatched documents become payment risk. Multi-plant manufacturers face the same arithmetic with heavier line counts per purchase order.
How to stop the chasing: six practical steps
Step 1: Map where every document lives today
Before changing anything, trace one recent purchase from request to payment. Note where the purchase order was created, where the delivery was recorded, where the invoice arrived and who touched each document. Most teams find three to five disconnected systems and at least one step that exists only on paper or in someone’s head.
Step 2: Bring requests, orders and invoices into one workflow
The single biggest fix is structural: purchase requests, approvals, purchase orders, goods received notes and purchase invoices belong in one connected workflow, not five tools stitched together with email. When every document links back to the purchase order that authorised the spend, the question “what is this invoice for?” answers itself.
Step 3: Log goods received at the point of delivery
Give the person receiving the delivery a simple way to confirm quantities against the open purchase order the moment goods arrive, including partial deliveries. A digital goods received note captured at the door removes the single largest gap in the matching chain and ends the “did we actually get this?” emails for good.
Step 4: Automate two-way and three-way matching
Once the three documents live in one place, software should compare them, not people. Automated three-way matching checks the purchase order, the goods received note and the purchase invoice against each other and flags genuine discrepancies: inaccurate pricing, quantities billed above what was received, inconsistencies between what arrived and what was ordered, or charges with no order behind them. Clean invoices flow straight through to payment without a human touching them.
Step 5: Route exceptions to owners, not inboxes
A flagged discrepancy should land with the one person who can resolve it, with the purchase order and delivery record attached, rather than holding up the whole payment queue. Formalise approval rules by value, category and department so nothing escalates upward by default, and let approvers act from their phone so a week of leave does not become a week of delay.
Step 6: Give both teams the same live view and measure it
Finance and procurement should look at the same screen: which orders are open, what has arrived, what is matched and what is queued for the payment run. Then track the numbers that expose chasing, such as invoice cycle time, exception rate and time spent on supplier enquiries. What gets measured stops being invisible.
Where Summit fits
Summit’s procure-to-pay platform was built to close exactly this gap. The entire cycle runs in one place: a purchase request is raised and approved, the purchase order is generated and sent to the supplier automatically, goods received notes are logged against the order as deliveries arrive, and when the purchase invoice lands, Summit’s automated matching verifies all three documents against each other before anything reaches the payment run.
Discrepancies such as inaccurate pricing, over-billing against what was received, budget breaches or the wrong supplier are flagged for review. Everything else moves through untouched. Approval workflows are fully customisable up to 10 steps, approvals work from the mobile app, and every action, amendment and match is written to a complete audit trail. Summit fits alongside Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics and SAP, syncing accounts payable data to your existing accounting software rather than replacing it.
The result is simple: finance stops chasing procurement, procurement stops fielding interruptions, and both teams work from one shared record of what was ordered, what arrived and what was billed.
See it on your own purchasing workflow. Book a meeting with our team, or fill up the form and we’ll be in touch.
Frequently asked questions
What is three-way matching in procure-to-pay?
Three-way matching compares the purchase order (what was ordered), the goods received note (what arrived) and the purchase invoice (what was billed) before payment is released. If price or quantity does not line up across the three documents, the invoice is flagged for review. Done manually it is one of the most time-consuming jobs in finance; automated, it runs in the background and only surfaces genuine discrepancies.
Why do finance and procurement teams clash over invoices?
Because they work from different records and are measured on different outcomes. Procurement optimises for keeping the business supplied; finance optimises for control and a clean close. When purchase orders, delivery records and invoices sit in separate systems, every mismatch turns into a cross-team enquiry, and enquiries feel like blame. A shared procure-to-pay workflow removes the structural cause of the friction.
Do we need to replace our accounting software to fix this?
No. Summit manages the purchasing workflow, from request and approval through purchase orders, goods received notes and automated matching, and syncs approved accounts payable data to accounting software and enterprise resource planning systems such as Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics and SAP for final records.
