# Video demo: SAP 4-way match automation in action

> Kognitos webinar on automating the 4-way match in SAP (PO, goods receipt, invoice, certificate of analysis) — and where every prior attempt has failed.

**Page**: https://www.kognitos.com/videos/automating-the-4-way-match-in-sap-with-kognitos/
**Watch on YouTube**: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBcqJGzKhDA
**Length**: 51m 51s

## 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 order** — what we ordered and the price we agreed to.
- **Goods receipt** — what physically arrived and was accepted.
- **Supplier invoice** — what 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.

## FAQs

**Q: 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.


**Q: 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.


**Q: 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.


**Q: 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.