Videos
Video demo: SAP 4-way match automation in action
Why SAP 4-way match has resisted 20 years of automation, and how Kognitos's English-as-code runtime finally cracks it without brittle bots.
About this webinar
A 52-minute deep-dive webinar on automating the 4-way match in SAP, the procure-to-pay verification step that has resisted 20+ years of automation attempts at most large enterprises.
The 4-way match, defined
For every supplier payment, AP needs to verify that four documents agree:
- Purchase orderwhat we ordered and the price we agreed to.
- Goods receiptwhat physically arrived and was accepted.
- Supplier invoicewhat the supplier is billing us.
- Certificate of analysis (COA)confirmation that the received goods meet the contracted quality specs (critical in pharma, food & beverage, and regulated manufacturing).
Why prior automation attempts failed
- Brittle SAP bots: traditional RPA on SAP UIs breaks on every screen change and rejects long-tail variations.
- Supplier document drift: every supplier's invoice and COA layout is different, template-based IDP needs constant retraining.
- Quality data buried in PDFs: COA values often live in scanned lab reports, not in any system of record.
- Black-box generative AI: regulated environments can't accept an unexplained “match/don't match” decision from an opaque model.
Kognitos's approach for the 4-way match
- Neurosymbolic architecture: an LLM-driven extraction layer reads the variable supplier documents (PO, invoice, COA), and a deterministic English-as-code runtime enforces the comparison logic, auditable, repeatable, and editable in plain English by AP staff.
- Exception handling in English: when a document doesn't match (price drift, quantity mismatch, COA quality variance), Kognitos surfaces the discrepancy in plain English for an AP user to resolve, and the resolution becomes a learning for future runs.
- Live SAP integration: the demo walks the end-to-end match including reaching into SAP for PO and goods-receipt data and reconciling against the supplier invoice and COA.
What's announced at the end of the session
- Kognitos Community Edition: available to everyone at cognitos.com/community with prebuilt agents and a chat-to-process builder (Autoite).
- Follow-on webinar with QBotica: a partner session for organisations looking to combine Kognitos with broader automation programs.
Questions answered in this video
What is a 4-way match in SAP, and which four documents are compared?
It's the procure-to-pay verification step that compares the purchase order, the goods receipt (what arrived), the supplier invoice, and the certificate of analysis (COA, the quality confirmation). All four must agree before payment is released. The COA piece in particular is critical for pharma, food & beverage, and regulated manufacturing.
Why has the 4-way match resisted automation for 20+ years?
Traditional RPA breaks on SAP UI changes and supplier document variability. Template-based IDP needs constant retraining because every supplier invoice and COA layout is different. And the quality data on a COA usually lives in a scanned PDF lab report, not in any structured system, that's the hardest piece to read reliably.
Why won't a plain generative AI tool solve the 4-way match in a regulated industry?
Because a black-box generative model can occasionally hallucinate, and there's no audit trail explaining why the system said “match” or “don't match.” That's not acceptable in pharma, food & beverage, or any regulated manufacturer. Kognitos's neurosymbolic approach pairs LLM extraction with a deterministic English-as-code runtime so every decision is transparent.
What does the Kognitos Community Edition include?
Open to everyone at cognitos.com/community: prebuilt agent environments to explore, and Autoite, a chat-to-process builder you can use to describe a process in plain English and have Kognitos generate the corresponding automation from scratch.