Three-way match in construction: invoice, delivery note and the contract price list

In accounts payable, a two-way match compares the invoice with the purchase order: price and quantity ordered. A three-way match adds the receipt — the delivery note, delivery ticket or goods received note (GRN) — so you only pay for what actually arrived. A four-way match adds an inspection or acceptance step. These are the definitions used by AP software vendors such as Ramp and by construction vendors such as Remarcable (checked 2026-09-29).

The textbook assumes one PO per purchase, raised in an ERP before the goods are ordered. On many job sites the site manager calls off concrete, rebar or aggregates as the work needs them, against prices agreed once in a supply contract or price list for the job. There is no PO per delivery to match against — the agreement is the contract.

Matching is also more useful at line level than at header level. A header-level match compares totals; a line-level match compares each item, quantity and unit price, which is where concrete classes, bar diameters and surcharges differ.

In the UK there is another nuance: for subcontract work the “receipt” is often a certified valuation, not a delivery note. Archdesk, a UK construction ERP, describes its match as invoice ↔ PO ↔ certified valuation ↔ delivery note (checked 2026-09-29). Subcontractor valuations and applications for payment are outside what Audiree checks; it focuses on materials deliveries.

The questions stay the same: is each invoiced line backed by a signed note, is the quantity and unit right, is it the same item, and is the unit price the contracted one? The difference is that the price reference is a contract line, and the description on the note rarely matches the contract text exactly.

The same lines feed a per-job-site dashboard: contracted vs invoiced, pending exposure and alerts, with a monthly breakdown and CSV export.

1. 01Delivery notes arrive as photos from the site chat group, PDFs or forwarded emails; invoices the same way.
2. 02Two AI models read each document independently and extract every line: item, quantity, unit, price. Disagreements go to human review.
3. 03Each line is matched to the job site’s contract price list by meaning (“CONC C25/30” = “Concrete C25/30 XC2”).
4. 04Ten deterministic checks (V1–V10) compare line price with contract price × quantity, totals with lines, units, item identity, supplier NIF and the contract reference — the wrong-contract detector.
5. 05What matches is approved automatically; differences go to the review queue with the exact amount and are resolved in one click.

Most AP tools let you set a tolerance — an accepted difference before a line becomes an exception. Audiree applies a tolerance to rebar tonnage (V7), since rebar billed by weight rarely agrees with the note to the kilo; prices are compared with the contract price as agreed. How tolerances are set for your company is part of adapting the platform to your management model, and is something to go through in the demo.

Audiree is not an ERP, an accounting system or AP payment software. It does not pay suppliers, does not issue delivery notes or invoices, is not a certified tax archive and does not submit anything to the Portuguese tax authority (AT). It does not validate ATCUD codes, QR codes or signatures with the AT — the document number and ATCUD are used to catch duplicates. It gives no tax advice: VAT rates and reverse-charge treatment stay with your accountant. There are no ready-made connectors to specific ERPs; checked data exports to CSV for Excel or for posting in the system you already use.

Audiree is built in Portugal and works today with Portuguese construction companies. Reading does not depend on a document’s layout, so delivery notes and invoices from suppliers in other countries can be read as they are. If you run projects outside Portugal, we run demos with your own documents — but we don’t claim local tax rules or integrations for your market.