# What is a three-way match?

URL: https://www.orla.finance/en/glossary/three-way-match
Markdown twin of that page. Append `.md` to any Orla page URL to get one.

A three-way match is an accounts payable control that pays a supplier's invoice only once it agrees with the purchase order and the receiving record on quantity, price and terms.

The purchase order authorised the spend; the receiving record shows the goods or services actually arrived. Each document proves one thing. The purchase order proves that somebody approved buying this, at this price, before the money was committed. The receiving record proves it arrived, in this quantity and this condition. The invoice is the supplier's claim. When the three agree within a tolerance the payment is released without anyone reading it; when they do not, a person resolves the difference. That is the whole design: attention goes to the exceptions.

The variants are named by count. A two-way match compares the invoice with the purchase order only, which is what services and subscriptions get, since nothing is received at a dock. A four-way match adds an inspection step for goods that are checked before they are accepted.

The control exists to stop three payments: for what was never ordered, for what never arrived, and for what was billed twice. It was designed for a company with a purchasing department and a receiving bay.

A company of ten has neither. Its equivalents are the quote or the contract (what was agreed), the person who ordered saying it turned up, and the bank's own record that the money left. Two pieces of the full version are worth keeping at that size, and both belong to [accounts payable](https://www.orla.finance/en/glossary/accounts-payable): no bill reads paid in the books until the payment is actually seen, and no supplier is paid to bank details that came from the bill itself.

#### How this shows up in Orla

Orla has no purchase orders and does not run a three-way match. It runs the two matches a small company actually has. On the money-out side a bill Orla tracks closes on its own only once Orla can see the payment reach the supplier; a matching amount on its own is never treated as proof, and a bill paid from a bank account waits to be marked paid until the transfer is confirmed.

On the money-in side your invoice takes the client's own PO number and prints it next to the dates, so their accounts payable can match the document to what they approved; it is their reference, so Orla neither generates nor checks it. What was agreed before the work lives in a quote, which becomes the invoice with the same lines.

#### Related terms

- Accounts payable: https://www.orla.finance/en/glossary/accounts-payable
- Month-end close: https://www.orla.finance/en/glossary/month-end-close

#### Read next

- Supplier bill approvals for a small team: https://www.orla.finance/en/blog/supplier-bill-approvals-small-team
- Bills, payments and invoices in Orla: https://www.orla.finance/en/product/money
- Security, and who can move money: https://www.orla.finance/en/security