Practical worksheet guide

Set up a three-way match in Excel

Use one stable line key, aggregate partial documents, and preserve source rows. Download the synthetic files to test your worksheet.

Start with a conservative line key

Normalize case and extra spaces, but keep punctuation and leading zeroes. A value such as 00045 is not safely interchangeable with 45.

=UPPER(TRIM([@[PO Number]])) & "|" & UPPER(TRIM([@[Item ID]]))

Minimum useful columns

PO exportReceipt exportInvoice export
PO number
Vendor
Item/SKU
Ordered quantity
Ordered unit cost
PO number
Item/SKU
Received quantity
Receipt ID/date
Vendor if available
Invoice number
PO number
Vendor
Item/SKU
Invoice quantity
Invoice unit cost
Line total if available

Aggregate before comparing

Use SUMIFS for received and invoiced quantities so one PO line can have several receipts and several invoices.

=SUMIFS(Receipts[Received Qty], Receipts[Match Key], [@[Match Key]])

=SUMIFS(Invoices[Invoice Qty], Invoices[Match Key], [@[Match Key]])

Then flag invoice quantity above receipts, invoice quantity above ordered quantity, and invoice unit price outside your explicit tolerance. Keep a separate state for missing or ambiguous keys; do not turn the closest-looking SKU into an automatic financial match.

Download synthetic sample files

These files are invented and contain clean, price, receipt, duplicate, and unresolved cases. They are safe to use in a worksheet or the MatchThree importer.

Skip the workbook wiring

Run the same synthetic case instantly, then export your own files when ready.

Try the MatchThree demo