How three-way matching of PO, GRN and vendor bill stops paying for what never arrived

Purchase runs on trust. The buyer agrees a rate on the phone, the store counts what came in on a slip of paper, and the accountant pays the bill that arrives three weeks later. Each person does their part correctly — and nobody checks that the three parts agree.

The payment problem nobody solves with more signatures

The usual response is to add another approval before payment. That slows vendors down and still lets the wrong bill through, because the approver is looking at the bill alone:

• The rate creeps up. The order said one rate, and the bill carries a slightly higher one.
• The delivery is short. The bill is for 500 units, and the store received 460.
• Rejected material is billed. Goods that failed inspection are still on the invoice.
• The same need is ordered twice. The floor asks again because nobody could see the stock already in the godown.

The gap is not honesty. It is that the order, the receipt and the bill live in three different places, so nobody sees them side by side.

What changes when the three documents sit together

The request starts on the floor

A material request asks for an item, a quantity, a reason and a date. It carries the stock balance at the time of asking, so nobody orders what is already on the shelf. A supervisor can raise it without seeing rates or commercial terms.

The vendor is chosen on the record

An RFQ sends the same requirement to several vendors, and the replies are compared side by side. The chosen quotation becomes the purchase order without retyping the lines, and the order goes through the approval matrix.

What arrived is what gets counted

When material comes in, the goods receipt note counts it against the order and posts it into stock with its batch. Anything that fails inspection goes to QC stock or rejected stock, not the usable pool.

The bill is checked three ways

The vendor bill is matched against the PO rate and the GRN quantity before it is accepted. A difference is on screen before anyone approves it — so it is settled with the vendor, not argued about after payment.

What this looks like in practice

Consider an engineering unit that buys steel, consumables and packing material from about forty vendors.

The store raises a material request for packing boxes. The buyer sends an RFQ to three vendors, picks the best reply, and it becomes a purchase order for 500 boxes at the agreed rate. The consignment arrives with 460 boxes, and the GRN records 460. Then the bill arrives:

• It is for 500 boxes.
• The rate is two rupees higher than the order.

Both differences show on the vendor bill screen before it is passed. The accountant asks the vendor for a corrected bill, and the payment goes out for what actually arrived, at the rate actually agreed.

Nothing here makes vendors more careful. What it does is stop the bill being the only document anyone reads — which is where most overpayment quietly happens.

Planned buying without a monthly negotiation

Repeat purchases do not need a fresh negotiation every month. A blanket order fixes the rate and the total quantity for the period, and each release draws against it. Purchase budgets set a ceiling by department or period and are checked while the order is being raised — so an overspend is caught at the point of decision, not in a report three weeks later.

Where this meets the rest of the business

Purchase is where cost enters the business, and every other record depends on it being right.

• Stock: the GRN is the stock entry, so purchase and stock do not need reconciling.
• Cost: landed cost adds freight, duty and clearing to the consignment, so item cost is true.
• Tax: TDS is applied on the bill at the rate set for its section, and input GST is captured on the bill.
• Accounts: the cleared bill is paid on terms, and the ledger, vendor balance and input tax credit move together.

That is the practical argument for purchasing sitting inside the same system as stock and accounts rather than beside it. The store, the buyer and the accountant read the same record.

A note on GST matching

Unnati matches the vendor bill against your own purchase order and goods receipt note, and captures input GST on the bill. Automatic reconciliation with GSTR-2A and 2B from the GST portal is on the roadmap and is not part of the product today. Every approval on the purchase carries a name and a time, and sits in the hash-chained audit trail.

Unnati's purchase module covers material requests, RFQs, purchase and blanket orders, purchase budgets, GRN, vendor bills and landed cost. The purchase feature page shows the screens, and the inventory page covers how receipts post to stock.