Three-Way Matching in Accounts Payable: Fraud Prevention and Spend Control

An SAP Concur blog post explains three-way matching in accounts payable: comparing the vendor invoice, the purchase order (PO) and the goods receipt to validate whether an invoice should be paid. It says three-way matching helps prevent fraud and duplicate invoices, control spend, reduce errors and improve financial accuracy, while two-way matching compares only invoice and PO and suits low-cost, non-physical purchases such as subscriptions, utilities or consulting fees. Common challenges include tedious manual work, data inconsistencies, partial deliveries and split shipments, purchases made outside the PO process, and disconnected procurement, ERP and AP systems.