THE METHOD

Five entries between arrived and posted.

The invoice arrives in whatever shape the vendor prefers; the line that posts must agree with the job file. The match engine closes that gap the same way every time — and shows its reasoning at every step.

01 · INGEST

Any format the vendor can invent.

Vendor invoices arrive however vendors feel like sending them: a carrier PDF, charges typed into an email body, a portal download, a co-loader’s spreadsheet, an agent’s monthly SOA. The desk parses each one as it lands and finds the job file it belongs to — by reference where the vendor supplied one, by lane, container and date where they didn’t. Multi-shipment invoices and statements get split per job before anything else happens, because a number you can’t tie to a job is a number you can’t check.

pdf · email body · portal · agent SOA → split per job · job file found

02 · MATCH

Every line meets its buy rate and accrual.

There is no purchase order in forwarding, so the classic three-way match gets rebuilt: invoice line ↔ buy rate and accrual ↔ job file. The job file is the contract; the shipment evidence is the receipt. The desk runs that match on every line — freight, THC, D&D, accessorials — against what your job file says you agreed to pay, and shows the comparison, not just the verdict. A line either meets its job file or it doesn’t; the desk never averages its way past a disagreement.

invoice ↔ buy rate/accrual ↔ job file · the forwarder three-way match

03 · FLAG

Variances get a name and the proof.

A line that disagrees gets flagged with a named reason — rate variance, duplicate, D&D, tax defect — never a vague “review needed.” And the desk brings the evidence from your own platform history: the quoted rate and its source for a rate variance, the twin line it already saw for a duplicate, the tracking events around free time and clock start for a D&D charge, the GSTIN or TRN defect for a tax line. Your team opens a flag and finds the argument already assembled.

RATE · DUP · D&D · GST — reason named · evidence attached

04 · DISPUTE

A human approves. The desk does the chasing.

Nothing leaves the building without sign-off — that’s the standing rule. Once a human approves a flag, the desk drafts the dispute with the proof attached, sends it to the vendor, and then does the part everyone skips: it tracks the dispute to an actual credit note and chases, politely and repeatedly, until the credit lands. A won dispute without a credit note is just a nice conversation, and the desk doesn’t close the entry until the money moves.

human gate → draft sent → tracked → credit note landed

05 · POST

Clean lines post. Late costs get re-billed.

Lines that match post straight to your accounting stack with their job references intact — no re-keying, no orphaned entries. And the desk keeps one eye on the calendar: any cost that arrives after the customer invoice already went out — an amendment fee, a D&D pass-through, a late accessorial — trips the AP→AR leak flag and gets routed for re-billing while the job is still warm, instead of being absorbed as a write-off nobody chose.

posted w/ job refs · cost after customer invoice → re-bill routed

THE FIRST 14 DAYS

DAY 1–3

Connect and seed: TMS, accounting stack and the invoice inbox wired in; buy rates and accruals seeded from your job files. That baseline is what every line will be matched against.

DAY 4–10

Shadow mode: the desk matches your live invoice traffic while your team verifies every call — each match, each flag, each named reason checked by a human before anyone relies on it.

DAY 11–14

Live, with the gate on: clean lines post, variances queue with evidence, and every dispute still leaves the building only after a human approves it.

Watch a real invoice matched