8th & Walton’s Heather Reid explains what happens when Walmart’s system can’t auto-match your invoice to a purchase order and receiving data. When the three-way match fails, your invoice enters research mode in APIS (Walmart’s Accounts Payable Inquiry System), requiring a human to perform a manual reconciliation.
Lainie: Why does the invoice I sent to Walmart show a status of “research” within APIS?
Heather: That’s a great question , because I’ll see invoices along the side in the invoice summary part of APIS, and it’ll say my invoice is in research mode. And I’m like, “Why?” Unfortunately, we don’t get a lot of details as to why, but some of the reasons can be that the system was not able to auto-match it. It wasn’t able to take your invoice and match it to a purchase order and match it to a receiving. They have this thing called the three-way match, and it wasn’t able to do that.
Are you a Walmart Supplier? Get in touch to schedule a free consultation:
So what happens is it basically goes into research mode, which means usually a human needs to get involved to try to do the reconciliation or matching of that invoice. Some of the reasons why that can happen include: the product got there before the invoice—and we’ve talked about that a few minutes ago—or there could be a pricing difference on the invoice. The quantities could be different. There could be various reasons for why it doesn’t match. So it goes into research.
