Accounts payable controls: three-way match, tolerances and segregation of duties
For AP clerks and supervisors, bookkeepers, controllers and the managers who set up purchase-to-pay controls. Complete 'Matching purchase orders, receipts and invoices' first, which teaches how to do a match line by line. This course is about the controls around the match: choosing a matching policy for each category, setting and applying tolerances, keeping ordering, receiving and paying apart, catching duplicate invoices, and correcting an exception log so every discrepancy is cleared by the right person. Examples use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance documentation for how matching tolerances work, and the US GAO Green Book for internal control principles. The principles apply in any system and country. Your company's AP procedure and approval matrix apply on the job.
- Level
- Intermediate
- Length
- About 80 minutes
- Contents
- 5 lessons · final exam
- Status
- Published · updated 10 Oct 2026
Skills you'll practise
- Choose a matching policy (invoice totals, two-way or three-way) for a purchase category and explain the risk it controls
- Calculate whether a price variance is within a percentage tolerance, an amount (not-to-exceed) tolerance, or both
- Identify incompatible duties across authority, custody and accounting in purchase-to-pay, and choose an alternative control when a team is too small to separate them
- Detect duplicate invoices and unmatched receipts using unique identifiers and reconciliations
- Correct an AP exception log so each discrepancy is resolved by the right person with evidence
Course outline
- 1.Choosing a matching policy for each purchase categoryLesson · 15 min
- 2.Calculating price variances against tolerancesLesson · 17 min
- 3.Identifying incompatible duties in purchase-to-payLesson · 16 min
- 4.Detecting duplicate invoices and unmatched receiptsLesson · 16 min
- 5.Correcting an AP exception logLesson · 8 min
- 6.Accounts payable controls: three-way match, tolerances and segregation of duties: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 14 questions
- 7.Accounts payable controls: three-way match, tolerances and segregation of duties: practical exerciseKnowledge check · 1 question
- 8.Final exam10 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out
Sources it draws on
The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.
- Microsoft Learn: Accounts payable invoice matching overview (Dynamics 365 Finance, 15 May 2025)
- Microsoft Learn: Three-way matching policies (Dynamics 365 Finance, 4 June 2026)
- GAO-25-107721: Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government (Green Book), May 2025
- GAO: The Green Book (overview page; 2025 edition effective from fiscal year 2026)
- Bureau of the Fiscal Service, US Treasury: Do Not Pay (last updated 8 April 2026)
See it with your own jobs and topics
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