Say ‘no’ to invoice reconciliation, delivery, and order mismatch

The hidden costs of the paper chase

• 70% of a finance team’s time goes to close-related tasks — PwC
• Payment delays erode early-payment discounts and strain supplier goodwill
• Forecast accuracy tanks when committed spend, receipts, and invoices never line up
• Employee morale plummets every time “Just circling back…” hits Send

The good news? None of this is inevitable. Like split shipments, split data can be fixed with proper integration. Let’s unpack how.

Connect once, speak many

Instead of wiring every platform to every other platform (and praying the CSV headers stay put), modern finance teams are moving to a hub-and-spoke architecture built on two integration workhorses:

1. Process APIs

These are reusable, business-friendly endpoints that encapsulate finance logic and validation rules. Whether the data comes from your ERP, the WMS, or a 3PL portal, everyone calls the same verbs. You can think of a process API as a “one-stop counter” for a business task. Instead of people or systems having to visit multiple back-office applications to get something done, they call a single process API and let it do the running around.

So, what do Process API’s do? Forget the normal string of processes. Process APIs gather the right data from several systems, apply your business rules (e.g., “don’t ship until payment is authorised”), and package the result in a tidy, predictable response that any app can understand.

The outcome? Process APIs turn complex, multi-step business operations into simple, reusable building blocks. They let your developers move quickly, keep data consistent, and shield the business from disruptive back-end changes.

2. Service-layer abstraction

This means wrapping your core systems in a “service layer” so your other applications don’t interact with them directly. 

What difference does this make? Well, instead of every channel talking directly to your ERP, they go through a service layer that handles the complexity and business logic. The layer translates each system’s dialect into a canonical finance language ( i.e., a single, agreed-upon language and structure for your organisation's data), orchestrates your workflows, and broadcasts real-time events to whoever needs them.

Why is this a good thing? It reduces system fragility, makes your upgrades easier, and creates consistency across channels. So, the minute an event happens (like goods received, order shipped, invoice issued), it flows through the service layer, where quantities, SKUs, tax codes, and PO numbers are cross-checked automatically. If everything agrees, the invoice is flagged Ready to Pay. If something’s off, a single exception record (with all appropriate documents attached) appears in the analyst’s queue. No inbox safari required.

The result? By using process APIs and service layer abstraction to connect finance platforms with order, inventory, and shipping systems, you’ll ensure your documentation and invoices match automatically – and hands-free.

Why this all matters to your business

We get that unless you have a passion for it, the technical aspects of integration probably don’t matter to you nearly as much as the business outcomes – and fair enough.

So, from an outcome’s perspective, here’s what you can expect:

Faster reconciliation and on-time payments

• Clear the majority of invoices the first-time round
• Your month-end close shrinks from days to hours because matching is continuous

Lower admin overhead

• Less time spent on manual reconciliation equals more time spent on other tasks

Happier suppliers & sharper cash visibility

• Pay on time (or early) and negotiate better terms and prompt payment discounts
• Real-time view of committed spend and incoming goods means your finance team can optimise working capital with confidence

Greener footprint

Yes, finance has a sustainability angle too: fewer reprints, fewer courier runs for “original hard copies,” and dramatically less digital exhaust from duplicate PDFs clogging mail servers!