Overpayments in accounts payable come from three sources: invoices paid at a higher price than the PO agreed, duplicate invoices paid twice, and invoices paid for goods that were never received or returned. Manual AP processes catch each of these inconsistently — particularly at high invoice volume, where coordinators miss the discrepancies that only become visible when the vendor's invoice is compared line-by-line against the PO and goods receipt.
Automated 3-way matching catches all three overpayment sources systematically. Price variances are flagged when the invoice unit price exceeds the PO unit price. Duplicate invoices are identified by comparing the incoming invoice against the complete payment history. Goods receipt gaps are caught when the invoice quantity exceeds the documented received quantity. Each discrepancy is flagged before payment is released, not after.
The Accounts Payable 3-Way Match AI Agent runs all three overpayment checks on every invoice — producing a complete verification report before any payment is authorized.