Purchase orders
The person who orders and the person who receives are never the same person.
Someone orders by phone, on a supplier's website, or by email. Nothing written down, and whoever signs for the delivery three days later has no idea what was asked for. So nobody checks — and the difference turns up on the invoice, if it turns up at all.
How it runs
Four steps, and only one of them is new work.
- 01Record the order in secondsPick the supplier, pick items off their catalogue, set quantities. Prices come prefilled from the catalogue and the delivery date defaults to tomorrow. Phone and website orders are recorded; email orders send from your own mailbox, with the reference in the subject line.
- 02The person receiving just scansWhoever takes the delivery photographs the invoice, exactly as they do now. They are not asked to remember what was ordered, or by whom, or on which day.
- 03Finio matches it against what is still owedNot order by order — against everything still open for that supplier. A fortnight of orders is one pool, and one invoice can draw from several of them.
- 04Matched lines code themselvesEvery catalogue item already carries its nominal code and its department, so a matched line is coded before anyone looks at it. Finance sees a clean invoice.
What counts as a match
Exact means exact.
There is no tolerance band and no rounding. A tool that quietly forgives small differences is a tool that lets a supplier drift its prices up, which is the thing this is for.
Price must be exact
Not within a tolerance. If the catalogue says £14.50 and the invoice says £14.62, that line is a mismatch and it says what it expected.
Quantity must be exact
Ordered eight, billed ten, and the two extra have nothing to sit against. The line is flagged with the overage rather than quietly absorbed.
Anything not in the pool is a mismatch
Including delivery charges and deposits. They are not errors, but they are not something you agreed a price for either, so a person decides.
When it does not match
It tells you which line, and why.
A mismatch is not a rejection and nothing is blocked. The invoice carries on to whoever codes it today, with the failing lines named — price differs and what was expected, quantity over, or an item nobody ordered. Finance is told at the same time, not at month-end.
The catalogue
Upload it once, or type it as you go.
A price list per supplier — a CSV, or items added while placing an order. Each item carries a fixed price and a nominal code, which is what lets a matched line know its department at the moment it is ordered rather than weeks later.
See it match a real invoice.
Ordering is for the site. Nobody in the office has to touch it.