checklist
How Do You Review a Month of Held Invoices Without Drowning?
Work the hold reasons in order of how much they explain: duplicates first, then missing receipts, then currency conflicts, then line-level variances. Each pass shrinks the pile and tells you which remaining holds need a person rather than a document. MatchHold supports the same order: duplicates short-circuit before matching runs, receipt gaps stay named holds, and every surviving exception keeps its source values beside it. Missing receipts stay holds; they are not inferred or filled in. MatchHold never approves, schedules, or records a payment.
Why sequence matters at month-end
The naive approach reads invoices one by one and rediscovers the same causes repeatedly. Sorting by hold reason batches similar work: all duplicates resolve in minutes, all receipt gaps become one conversation with the warehouse, and what remains is genuinely analytical.
Sequencing also protects the deadline. If the month must close before every hold resolves, the sorted list makes the residual risk legible: these three invoices are blocked on physical evidence, these five on supplier answers, and here is the money each one represents.
What to bring
Bring the full document set for the month: invoices, purchase orders, receipts, and the list of invoice IDs already processed this period. The duplicate check is only as good as the processed-ID list behind it.
Bring the tolerances actually in force this period. Reviewing against remembered rules produces arguments; reviewing against recorded ones produces decisions.
Step 1: Clear the duplicates
Any invoice whose ID was already processed returns as duplicate with reason already-processed and no further checks. These need no analysis, only confirmation that resubmission is expected or should go back to the supplier.
Step 2: Batch the receipt-missing holds
Group every receipt-missing hold by purchase order and send the warehouse one list, not thirty emails. While waiting, resist the temptation to mark them reviewed; an unproven delivery is not a closed invoice.
Step 3: Settle currency conflicts
Purchase orders and invoices in different currencies are reported as conflicts, never converted silently. Decide per conflict whether a supplied rule applies — then the comparison proceeds under that explicit rule, with the decision on record.
Step 4: Work the variances line by line
Quantity and unit-price findings keep SKU, source values, variance, and tolerance together. Read them as questions — did we receive less than invoiced, or price more than ordered? — and route each to buyer or supplier accordingly.
Step 5: Close with the honest remainder
Whatever is still held at cutoff stays held, with reasons attached. MatchHold never approves, schedules, or records a payment; carrying named holds into next month is a defensible outcome, and clearing them by invention is not.
Verification
A clean checklist run leaves three artifacts: the duplicate resolutions, the routing lists for receipt gaps and conflicts, and the exceptions-only report showing final status per invoice. Any invoice marked matched should be traceable to documents that were actually compared — spot-check two.
Limits that stay in this checklist
Missing receipts stay holds; they are not inferred or filled in. Time pressure changes the order of work, never the standard of proof.
MatchHold never approves, schedules, or records a payment. The checklist ends in a review state, and payment authority stays wherever your organization keeps it.
What MatchHold does in this checklist
MatchHold runs the mechanical passes so the month-end meeting is about decisions: duplicate detection before matching, per-SKU receipt sums, tolerance-based line findings, and a stable hold-reason vocabulary that makes the sorting in steps one through four automatic.
You bring the month's documents and tolerances; the workspace brings the discipline of comparing only what exists.
FAQ
Questions this guide is for
Where does the processed-invoice list come from?
From you. The duplicate check compares against the invoice IDs supplied as already processed, so feed it the period's history.
Can I partially clear an invoice?
No. Statuses are matched, hold, or duplicate for the invoice as a whole; line-level findings live in the exceptions with their own values and tolerances.
What carries over if I resume next week?
Checkpointed findings merge with newly supplied documents on recovery, so prior exceptions are preserved rather than re-derived.
Start in the workspace
Sort the month's holds
Sign in from this page with the month's invoices, purchase orders, and receipts for one project. The report sorts itself by named hold reason.