Industries · Retail
Retail
High volumes of vendor documents and store-level paperwork, processed at the pace the business moves.
Where it gets stuck
Retail payables is a volume problem with a dispute at the end
No single vendor invoice is hard. Thousands of them a month, each tied to a store, a return or a promotion, is what keeps the team keying until the payment run.
Vendor invoices
Thousands of small invoices
Three hundred suppliers delivering to sixty stores means invoices per store, per delivery, sometimes per day. Each one is small, and each one still has to be keyed and matched before anyone can approve it. The count is what fills the payables week.
Receiving
The receipt is still at the store
Goods are received against a delivery challan signed by the shift manager. Until that paper reaches head office the invoice cannot be matched, and the vendor rings to ask why they have not been paid.
Returns
Credit notes that never meet their invoice
Damaged and expired stock goes back on your debit note and comes back as their credit note, weeks later and under a different reference. The vendor balance drifts a little every month.
Trade terms
Promotional funding agreed by email
Vendor-funded discounts, listing fees and volume rebates are agreed by the category team. Finance meets the terms when a claim has to be raised, and the evidence is a sell-through report and a long email thread.
Deductions
Chargebacks the vendor disputes
Shortage, damage and late-delivery deductions are taken out of the payment. Every one turns into a dispute unless the evidence travels with it.
Stores
Store expenses and petty cash
Repairs, housekeeping, electricity and local purchases are paid at the store against receipts that are handwritten, or a creased photo on someone's phone. Someone at head office codes them at month end without having been there.
Documents and data
What arrives, and what it has to agree with
Most of a vendor's balance is invoices. The part that causes arguments is everything netted off against them.
Here is how one vendor's month looks once those documents sit on the same record, with each deduction next to its evidence.
One vendor's month, netted. Illustrative example
A deduction that travels with its evidence is settled in one reply. Without it, the same ₹ 9,840 gets argued about for a quarter.
Capabilities
What PTAS AI does with them
Reading is the easy part. The work is tying each document to the store and the PO it belongs to, before anyone has to look at it.
Read every vendor's layout
01Invoices, challans, credit notes and statements read into typed fields with a confidence score per field, including scans from a store back office.
Match to the store that received it
02Each invoice line is matched to the PO and to the receipt at the store or DC it names, so a short delivery at one store does not hold the rest.
Pair credit notes with their returns
03Credit notes tied to your debit note and the original invoice, with the GST reversal checked, so the balance reflects what actually went back.
Calculate claims from the terms
04Promotional funding and rebates calculated by the rules you set from the agreed terms and the sales or receipt data, with the working attached to the claim.
Send disputes to the owner
05A disputed shortage goes to the store manager, a disputed promotion to the category buyer, each with the evidence. Nobody forwards a thread.
Code store expenses at source
06Store bills and receipts read from a phone photo, checked against the store's limit and coded to its cost centre in the week they are spent.
We would build store-level matching first. The receipts already exist, the volume is high, and a held line upsets a vendor far less than a held invoice.
One invoice, three stores. Illustrative example
Matching at store level means one short delivery holds one line, not the vendor's whole invoice.
Product
Which product carries it
DocPro reads the paperwork. FinSuite runs the payables, vendor checks and GST work that follow. Most retailers start with the vendor invoice queue, because that is where the volume is.
Integrations
Systems that can be connected
The ERP holds the PO and the ledger, the store or warehouse system holds the receipt, and the vendor's inbox holds the rest. The aim is to stop re-keying between them.
SAP
ERP
Oracle
ERP
Microsoft Dynamics
ERP
Tally
Ledger
Point of sale
Store sales
Warehouse system
DC receipts
Vendor portal
Invoices and statements
Email and shared drives
Document intake
GSTR-2B data
Vendor filings
There are four integration methods: native where a system offers one, API, file or flat-file exchange, and custom work for an in-house POS or merchandising system. SAP and Oracle connect by API or file, as their integration pages describe. For Microsoft Dynamics, Tally, point of sale, warehouse systems and vendor portals, the method is confirmed in discovery against the version you run. The names here are planning examples, not packaged connectors.
See all integrationsOutcomes
What you can measure, and how
We do not quote improvements before we have seen your vendors' documents. We do agree the measures before the work starts, and these four are the ones retail teams track first.
Invoices that need a person
- Today
- Every invoice is keyed and matched by hand, so the queue grows with the store count.
- What changes
- Invoices that match at store level go to payment. Only short, over and unmatched lines wait.
- How it is measured
- Share of invoices posted with no manual touch, by vendor and by store, taken from the audit trail.
Debit notes still unpaired
- Today
- Returns are debited on your side and credited on theirs, weeks apart, and nobody pairs them.
- What changes
- Each credit note is tied to its debit note and invoice the day it arrives.
- How it is measured
- Value and age of debit notes without a matching credit note at month end, by vendor.
Promotional funding claimed
- Today
- Claims are raised when someone has time to pull the sales data. Some are never raised.
- What changes
- Claims are calculated from the agreed terms each period, with the working attached.
- How it is measured
- Funding claimed against funding due under the terms, per agreement and per period.
Deductions in dispute
- Today
- A deduction is argued by email for weeks because the evidence is still in a store.
- What changes
- Every deduction leaves with its receipt line, photo or clause.
- How it is measured
- Deductions disputed by vendors each month, and the days taken to settle each one.
FAQ
Questions retail finance teams ask
Our vendors invoice per store and per delivery. Does every invoice still get matched on its own?
Yes, and that is the work the agents take on. Each invoice is matched to the PO and to the receipt at the store or DC it names. An invoice that covers several stores is split by store first, so one short delivery holds one line and the rest goes to payment.
Store receipts are paper challans. How do they reach the match?
A phone photo or a scan from the store is enough. The challan is read, the received quantity and the signature are captured, and the store manager is asked to confirm anything that could not be read with confidence. Where your warehouse or store system already records the receipt, we read it from there instead.
Can promotional funding and rebates be calculated automatically?
Where the terms are written down, yes. Each agreement is held as structured terms: rate, period, items in scope and how the claim is made. The calculation then runs on your sales or receipt data. Terms that exist only in a buyer's inbox have to be captured once, and we would rather scope that work at assessment than pretend it is not there.
Do our vendors have to start using a portal?
No. Vendors keep sending invoices the way they do today: by email, on paper with the delivery, or through a portal you already run. Changing how three hundred vendors send documents is a project of its own, and the automation does not depend on it.
Keep reading
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The purchase chain behind the shelves, from requisition to payment.
Read more →Accounts Payable Automation
The payables cycle a matched vendor invoice enters.
Read more →Expense Automation
Store bills and claims, read, checked and coded.
Read more →Next step
Start with one vendor's month
Their invoices, the store receipts and the credit notes for the same period. That is enough to show where the balance drifts and which lines a store-level match would have held.