What is happening with the Matching feature?

What is happening with the Matching feature?

Since 1 April 2023, the Matching feature in ApprovalMax is no longer supported for Organisations on a Xero Standard plan.

ApprovalMax launched a basic Bill-to-Purchase Order Matching feature in 2017. In 2022, we announced our plan to discontinue this early version because we have developed an advanced and new Matching feature that offers more flexibility and efficiency.
We therefore discontinued the support for our previous Matching version from 1 April 2023.
 

What is the difference?

The upgraded version of our Matching feature comes with several benefits.
Here are some of its functionalities:
  1. Many-to-Many Matching and Amount Allocation
    ApprovalMax supports Many-to-Many Matching, so you can match any number of Bills to any number of Purchase Orders.
    For example: If the Purchase Order amount is $1000, you can approve multiple Bills with varying amounts that are related to that Purchase Order. If there's one Bill for $500 and another for $300, this leaves a remaining Purchase Order balance of $200 that has yet to be billed. 
  2. Mark Purchase Orders as Billed automatically
    You can change your Matching settings so that when the last Bill related to your Purchase Order is approved – and the remaining balance is zero – your Purchase Order will automatically be marked as Billed. Depending on how many Purchase Orders you have, this can save a lot of time.
  3. View the remaining balance for Bills and Purchase Orders
    The remaining balance of Bills and Purchase Orders is calculated by subtracting from the original document amount any amount that has been matched to it. When a new match is added, an existing one is removed, or the matching amount is changed, the remaining balance is automatically recalculated.
  4. Automatically remove a previous match
    Any match will be removed automatically if the related Bill gets deleted or rejected, if the corresponding Purchase Order is cancelled or deleted, or if the Supplier and Currency are no longer the same. You can also manually remove a match at any time.
  5. Gross or net matching
    You can specify whether you want to use gross or net amounts for the purpose of matching Bills to Purchase Orders.
  6. Administrators can change matchings after Bill approval
    Administrators now can match Bills to Purchase Orders at any time – even if the Bill has already been approved – as well as delete or change matchings.

Where is the upgraded Matching feature available?

The upgraded Matching feature is included in our Advanced and Premium plans. A free 14-day trial is open to all. When it expires, customers with a Standard plan would need to upgrade if they want to continue using this feature.
 
Features you can try in our Advanced plan:
  1. Budget Checking: enable Approvers to check expenses against their budgets
  2. Bill-to-PO Matching: get better control over expenses by matching Bills to the related Purchase Orders
  3. Workflow Version History: keep track of your workflow history and easily go back to a previous version
  4. Contact approval: approve Contacts before doing business with them; new Bills can only be created once the Contact is in the system
  5. Manual Journal approval: create and approve a manual recording of transactions and adjustments to your accounting file
  6. Quote approval: approve Quotes and send them to a customer, then copy them to Sales Invoices
  7. Editing on Approval: grant editing permissions to Approvers in any step
  8. Review step: add a separate Review step at the start of your approval process as a dedicated stage for thorough review and validation
  9. Goods Received Notes: track the current GR status in Purchase Orders
  10. Auto-approvals: automatically approve recurring Bills when they meet the rules you specified

Features you can try in our Premium plan:
  1. All features of the Advanced plan, as mentioned above
  2. Batch Payment approvals (Xero users only): prepare and approve Batch Payments with ease
  3. Payments with Airwallex (UK only): pay your Bills directly via ApprovalMax
  4. Public API: enables other systems to retrieve data from ApprovalMax and display it in your own systems without any manual action by a person
  5. Premium support: your support tickets are given higher priority

How do I start using the upgraded Bill-to-PO Matching if I was using the previous version before?

Bill-to-PO Matching is available under our Advanced or Premium plans. You'll need to migrate your matching with this simple process:



If you have any questions, please contact our support team.

How does this change the process?

The process itself is not that different, just more flexible and with new features. However, you'll need to allocate the Bill amount to the respective Purchase Order, and the Matching will then be available from the Bill.

How is Bill-to-PO Matching reflected in reporting?