At month-end, a finance lead wants a straight answer before the payment run: which vendor bills can go out, which can’t, and why. Usually that means someone digs through invoices, purchase orders and receiving reports by hand. Here, Sysmere Foodservice, the company we use to show ALK at work, asks one question about this week’s 22 vendor invoices and follows the answer all the way back to the page it came from.
Step 1 of 9
Say it in plain words
The question goes in as you’d ask a colleague: what’s holding up this week’s vendor payments? Chart it by vendor.
Step 2 of 9
The answer, charted
5 of the 22 invoices are on hold, $39,996 in all. Prairie Gold Dairy’s $10,069 is the biggest single amount.
Step 3 of 9
What’s behind the number
$16,427 is waiting on deliveries that haven’t arrived in full. $13,500 is on invoices billed above their purchase order. $10,069 is an invoice that was already paid once.
Step 4 of 9
The files behind the number
Every one of the 22 invoices was checked against its purchase order and receiving report. These 5 are held; the other 17 are ready to pay.
Step 5 of 9
The reason, with the receipt
Hollis Creek Poultry billed chicken breast at $2.89 a pound. The purchase order says $2.64. That’s $600 over on one line, well past the $50 the policy allows.
Step 6 of 9
See the page it came from
The purchase order in the same pack shows chicken breast at $2.64 a pound for 2,400 pounds, so anyone on the team can confirm it in seconds.
Step 7 of 9
The decision: pay 17, hold 5
$86,403.70 goes to the payment run. The 5 held invoices wait with their reasons named. A person signs off first.
Step 8 of 9
Name your limit
One instruction: warn me when more than $25,000 is on hold.
Step 9 of 9
ALK tells you first
This week $39,996 is on hold, $14,996 over the limit, with each vendor and reason listed.
What ALK checks on every invoice
- Vendor, PO number and every line against the approved purchase order
- Unit prices and the invoice total against the PO, within the $50 the policy allows
- Quantities invoiced against what the receiving report shows as received
- Whether the invoice number was already paid
- Where each invoice goes next: ready to pay or held as an exception
Try it on your own invoices
Send one real vendor invoice with its purchase order and receiving report, or a redacted set, and see what ALK finds.
