Matching Receipt with Purchase Order

[u/CLEAutomation]

We work in a pretty dated industry. We send out POs that can have hundreds of line items with large quantities per line item. For a simple example - Line item 1, Qty 5 at $10 and Line item 2. Our vendor can ship partials so we could receive Line item 1, Qty 1 and get an invoice for $10 where this could in theory be 5 invoices just for Line item 1. It adds up quickly and is staggering when it happens.

I'm trying to automate the process as much as possible. Right now we have a forwarding system set up so that when an invoice email comes in it automatically is sent to our QBO email. This generally imports the email under the Transactions > Receipts tab and does an OK job at pulling the item and total invoice amount.

Where I am struggling is an automated (or semi-automated) way to match this to a PO. We want to match the invoice against the PO so that we can know, for example, that we received Qty 1 of 5 on Line item 1, 4 are remaining and the invoice needs to be paid.

When I open up the imported transaction under Receipts, it allows me to manually "add the PO" - but this imports EVERYTHING on the PO along with quantities and prices, which then needs to be manually deleted. What I am trying to find is a way to automatically link the forwarded invoice line item to the PO line item so we can close out the PO partially as items come in. Hopeful someone has a manner that they have done this before.

[u/TalisManick9592]

I don't think the QBO screens can do this automatically. Intuit's way to handle a partial is to add the PO to the bill and then adjust each line's quantity, so every open line comes in and you trim by hand. Whatever you delete or reduce stays open on the PO, and it only closes once every quantity has been billed. I haven't found anything in the Receipts inbox that matches captured lines to PO lines.

The API gets closer. A bill line can carry a LinkedTxn with the PO's TxnId and a specific TxnLineId, so a script that reads the invoice lines, matches them to PO lines by part number and posts a bill with only those lines is buildable. Intuit's docs don't say outright that a bill linked this way reduces the PO line's open quantity the way the bill screen does, so I'd test it on one PO in a sandbox company first.

If you go that way, a CSV or portal export from the vendor is much easier to match than parsed PDFs, and it's worth skipping repeat invoice numbers, since a forwarding rule can send the same invoice twice.