> Template skill. Three-way match is a standard, public accounts-payable method — the discipline below is shared and well-known; only the specific tolerances are yours to set. The tolerance bands and routing thresholds shown are a worked, illustrative example: fork this skill and replace them with your real accounts-payable policy, and the agent then applies your thresholds instead of guessing. The measured lift demonstrates the shape works; the specific tolerances are yours to set.

Document Reconciliation (Three-Way Match)

Takes three documents for one purchase — the purchase order (what was ordered), the goods receipt (what the warehouse actually received), and the supplier invoice (what is being billed) — and decides whether to pay the invoice. The output is a per-line comparison, a typed flag on every mismatch, and one routing verdict.

The base model, handed these three documents and asked "should we pay this?", eyeballs the header totals and gives a narrative yes/no. It does not, by default: match line by line across all three, apply an explicit tolerance band, name each mismatch by type, or route the result through a fixed approve/hold/escalate policy. This skill makes that discipline mandatory.

When to Use

Activate when the user has an invoice and at least one of the order or the receipt and wants a pay decision:

• Should we pay this invoice? Here's the PO and the receipt.
• Do these three documents line up before I release payment?
• Cross-check this supplier bill against what we ordered and received.

Do NOT activate for: pulling fields out of one document (that is extraction), approving a T&E expense report, or matching bank transactions to a ledger.

Step 1 — Match Line Items Across All Three Documents

Do not compare totals. Build one row per distinct line and pull the ordered, received, and billed figures side by side.

• Match key: SKU/part number first. If a document omits the SKU, fall back to a normalized description match (case-insensitive, word-order-insensitive: "Bracket, steel" = "Steel bracket").
• A line may appear on some documents and not others — that absence is itself a finding (Step 3), not a reason to skip the line.
• Compare quantities against the goods receipt, not the PO: you pay for what was received, not what was ordered.

Step 2 — Apply the Tolerance Bands

These bands are org policy (the numbers you fork and replace):

| Dimension | Rule | Within band → | Outside band → flag | |---|---|---|---| | Unit price | Invoice unit price ≤ PO unit price +2% (rounding/FX headroom). Price below PO is always acceptable. | pass (note a below-PO price as a favorable variance) | price-variance | | Billed vs received qty | Billed qty ≤ received qty. Never pay for more than was received. | pass | qty-over | | Received vs ordered qty | Received within 5% of ordered. Short by more than 5% = short delivery; more than ordered = over-delivery. | pass (note it) | short-ship / over-delivery | | Line extended amount | Immaterial if off by ≤ the greater of $2 or 1% of the PO line amount (pure rounding). | pass | (falls out of price/qty flags) |

Extended edge cases — units-of-measure conversion (cases vs eaches), multi-currency invoices and the FX band, one PO received across several partial goods receipts, and non-matchable lines like freight or tax: see references/edge-cases.md.

Step 3 — Flag Every Mismatch by Type

Assign one of these types to each problem line — a bare "there's a discrepancy" is not enough:

• price-variance — invoice unit price above the +2% band.
• qty-over — billed quantity exceeds received quantity.
• short-ship — received quantity below ordered beyond the 5% band.
• over-delivery — received quantity above the ordered quantity.
• missing-line — a line on the PO/receipt that the invoice never bills, or invoiced with nothing received.
• duplicate-line — the same SKU billed more than once on the invoice.
• unmatched-charge — an invoiced line with no matching PO line at all (off-contract charge, e.g. a pallet or handling fee that was never ordered).

Step 4 — Route: Approve / Hold / Escalate

Collect all flags, then pick the verdict by the highest-severity flag present (escalate beats hold beats approve):

• ESCALATE (control or fraud signal, not a clerk fix) — any unmatched-charge, any duplicate-line, a re-submitted invoice already paid, or an invoice total over the PO total beyond the price band with no approver on file.
• HOLD (recoverable with the supplier or warehouse) — any price-variance, qty-over (short-pay to the received quantity and hold the difference), short-ship, over-delivery, or missing-line.
• APPROVE — every invoiced line matches a PO line and a receipt line, unit price within (or below) the band, and billed qty ≤ received qty. A below-PO price or an under-tolerance rounding gap still approves.

Output Format

A per-line table, then the verdict:

| SKU | Ordered | Received | Billed | Unit price (PO → inv) | Flag | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | A-100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 12.00 → 12.00 | — | | A-205 | 50 | 46 | 50 | 4.00 → 4.00 | qty-over |

Verdict: HOLD — billed 50 of SKU A-205 but only 46 were received; short-pay to 46 and hold the 4-unit difference with the supplier.

Worked Examples

Clean match → APPROVE

Ordered/received/billed all 30 of SKU B-011 at unit 5.00; ordered/received/billed all 12 of SKU B-012 at unit 40.00. Verdict: APPROVE — every line matches on SKU, quantity, and price within band.

Price above band → HOLD

SKU C-200: PO unit 8.00, invoice unit 8.60 (+7.5%), quantities all equal. Verdict: HOLD — price-variance on C-200: billed 8.60 against an ordered 8.00, past the +2% band.

Off-contract charge → ESCALATE

Every ordered line matches, but the invoice adds a "handling fee" line with no SKU on the PO. Verdict: ESCALATE — unmatched-charge: the handling-fee line was never ordered and has no PO line to match.

Under-tolerance rounding → APPROVE

SKU D-9: PO unit 3.33, invoice unit 3.34 (+0.3%), same quantities; line total off by $0.15. Verdict: APPROVE — the gap is within the rounding band; do not flag a penny.

Edge Cases

• Invoice bills the received quantity after a short delivery: received 40 of an ordered 100, invoice bills 40 — approve the payment (you pay for what arrived) and note the short-ship for procurement follow-up; do not hold the payment.
• Price below PO: approve and record it as a favorable variance — never hold a discount.
• Both a hold-level and an escalate-level flag on one invoice: the verdict is ESCALATE (highest severity wins), even if most lines are clean.
• A line the invoice under-bills (billed less than received): favorable — approve, note it.
• No goods receipt available yet: you cannot clear the quantity band — HOLD pending receipt, do not approve on the PO alone.

Quick Checklist

• ] Matched line by line (SKU, then description), not by comparing totals
• ] Compared billed quantity against the receipt, not the PO
• ] Applied the +2% price band and the quantity bands explicitly
• ] Gave every mismatch a specific flag type
• ] Routed by the highest-severity flag: escalate > hold > approve