Supplier bills and the 3-way match

A supplier bill is the supplier’s invoice to you. Outpost checks it against what you ordered and what arrived before you pay it, and spreads freight and fees over the goods so that your stock cost and your margins include them. This page covers entering a bill, the match, approval and landed cost, and exporting bills to your accounts payable system.

Before you begin

• Entering and matching bills needs procurement:write. Approving, voiding, and exporting them needs procurement:approve.
• The goods on the bill have been received. See Receive deliveries.

Enter a bill

1. Select Procurement > Supplier bills, then Enter a bill.
2. Choose the Supplier, and enter Their invoice number, the Bill date, and the Due date.
3. In Copy received lines from, choose the purchase order, then select Copy lines. The received lines are copied with their quantities and costs. Change any line to match what the supplier billed.
4. Enter the Freight and Tax the supplier charged.
5. Select Save bill.

A bill can cover more than one purchase order. Copy lines from each, or select Add a line and pick the Purchase order for the line.

Bills from a distributor

A distributor connection that supports invoices pulls the distributor’s bills in every 6 hours and matches them on arrival. They show From the distributor. The first pull after a connection is added reaches back 120 days. See Distributor connections.

Pax8 bills have no invoice number of their own, so they are named Pax8 followed by the invoice date. A second bill on the same date gets (2), and so on.

Run the match

Open the bill and select Run the match. Saving a change to a bill does not re-run it, so run it again after editing.

How the match works

The Three-way match card puts each bill line beside its purchase order line and what was received: Ordered, Received, Billed, PO cost, Billed cost, Amount, Match, and Variance.

Line result	When
Matched	The billed quantity is no more than was received, and the billed unit cost is within the Price tolerance, percent of the purchase order’s.
Variance	The line is billed for more than arrived, or its cost is outside the price tolerance.
Unmatched	The line is not on a purchase order.

Freight is checked as a whole: billed freight within the Freight tolerance of the purchase order’s freight still matches. Freight outside it shows Differs from the order.

The bill is Matched when every line is, and Variance otherwise, with the total variance shown. Set the tolerances in Procurement > Settings on the Bill matching card. The defaults are 2 percent and $25.00.

Approve the bill

Select Approve. A bill with a variance asks you to confirm the amount it is over or under what was ordered and received.

Approving writes the landed cost:

• The bill’s freight and fees are spread over the purchase order’s stocked lines in proportion to each line’s value. Any difference between the billed and ordered price is allocated to its own line.
• Each allocation goes into the stock item’s average cost, for the received units still on hand. See Inventory.
• Each received asset still in your stock gets its share per unit, shown on the asset as landed cost. Assets already delivered to a client keep the cost they were received at.
• A sales order the goods were bought for counts the landed cost in its margin. See Sales orders.

Approving the same bill twice never adds the cost twice.

Export to payables

1. On Procurement > Supplier bills, select the approved bills to export.
2. Select Export to payables.

Outpost downloads a CSV file and marks each bill Exported. The file has the columns Batch, Supplier, Supplier account, Bill number, Bill date, Due date, Currency, Subtotal, Freight, Tax, and Total, one row per bill. Import it into your accounting system. Only approved bills can be exported, up to 1,000 at a time.

Void a bill

Select Void on a bill that was entered by mistake. A bill can be voided until it is exported, even after approval. Landed cost from an approved bill stays where it was allocated.

Bill statuses

Status	Meaning
Draft	Entered, not yet matched.
Matched	Every line matches.
Variance	At least one line or the freight is outside tolerance.
Approved	Approved, and its landed cost allocated.
Exported	Included in a payables export.
Void	Voided.

Verify

• The bill shows Approved, with who approved it and when.
• The stock item’s Average cost includes the freight.
• On the MSP plan, the sales order’s Margin card shows the cost basis Received, with freight and fees.

Next steps

• Inventory
• Sales orders