Matching to an order

Matching an invoice to its order is where the money is actually saved. It takes a minute per invoice and it is the only point at which an overcharge is still a question rather than a credit request.

What to compare

Check	Question
Supplier	Is this the supplier you ordered from?
Quantity	Did they deliver what the order says?
Rate	Is the unit price the one you agreed?
Total	Does it multiply out?
GST	Charged correctly?
Extras	Delivery, waiting time, call-out — were these in the order?

The common mismatches

The rate is higher than the order. Either the price rose between order and delivery, or the order was raised at an out-of-date rate. Query it. Suppliers generally honour the ordered rate; the ones who do not will at least tell you the new price applies from now, which you need to know.

The quantity is higher. An extra part-load of concrete, more mesh than ordered. Usually legitimate — site conditions — but it should have been authorised at the time. If nobody on site knows about it, ask.

There are charges not on the order. Waiting time, after-hours delivery, a call-out fee, pump-out. These are the most commonly disputed items and the most commonly waved through. If it was not in the order, it needs a reason.

The invoice is for work not done. Rare, and worth catching. Check against the site before paying.

Small overcharges are the expensive ones

A $362 concrete overcharge on one job is noise. The same overcharge on forty jobs a year is $14,000 you did not price for. The invoices worth checking are not the large ones — those get scrutinised anyway — but the routine ones nobody looks at.

Worked example

The Hendricks concrete order and the invoice that came back:

	Ordered	Invoiced	Difference
Concrete N32	18.64 m³ @ $228 = $4,249.92	19.20 m³ @ $228 = $4,377.60	+$127.68
Concrete pump	1 @ $850 = $850.00	1 @ $850 = $850.00	—
Waiting time	not ordered	1.5 hr @ $156 = $234.00	+$234.00
Total ex GST	$5,099.92	$5,461.60	+$361.68

Two separate things, and they need separate answers.

The extra 0.56 m³ is normal — you order to the calculated volume and the site takes what it takes. Accept it, and note that your slab allowance runs about 3% light on this kind of job.

The waiting time is a question. Ring the supervisor: was the truck held up, and why? If the pump was late, that is arguably the pump supplier’s cost, not yours. If the site was not ready, it is a genuine cost and a lesson. Either way it should not be paid without anybody knowing what it was for.

Part deliveries

An order delivered in stages produces several invoices against one order. Record each as its own expense matched to the same order.

The order’s committed value stays as ordered; the actual accumulates across the invoices. When the last one is in, the two should agree.

When the order was wrong

Sometimes the invoice is right and the order was wrong — you ordered at a stale rate, or the scope grew and nobody revised the order.

Fix the order rather than quietly accepting the difference in the expense. An order that no longer reflects the agreed scope makes the committed figure wrong for every report from then on. See Committed vs actual cost.

A workable routine

Once a week, with the invoices that have arrived:

1. Generate each expense from its order where possible.
2. Correct the quantities and rates to what was actually charged.
3. Look at every difference and decide: accept, query, or fix the order.
4. Attach the supplier PDF.
5. Export to Xero for payment.

Ten minutes for a normal week, and it is the difference between knowing what your jobs cost and finding out afterwards.