Invoiced price control
Check invoiced prices: every line compared with the negotiated price, the gap quantified before payment
Checking invoiced prices means comparing every unit price, discount and ancillary charge on an invoice with the price you negotiated, in the version of the contract in force that day. Zylio’s Compliance agent does it line by line, quantifies the gap, shows the clause and the line side by side, and lets you decide whether to dispute or pay.
The problem
The negotiated price and the invoiced price are two different numbers
A negotiation ends with a document: framework contract, unit price schedule, rate card, amendment. That document says what you should pay. The invoice says what the supplier keyed into its own system, often months later, by someone who never read the contract. Between the two there is no bad faith; there is a rate updated too early, a discount forgotten, a delivery charge added by default.
The problem is that nobody compares. The ERP controls the process (does the invoice match an order, was the order approved), but not the price against the contract. The controller checks the total, or a few invoices by sampling. The unit price of a common reference, invoiced one cent too high thousands of times, triggers no alert.
The result: the margin negotiated in the meeting room evaporates on invoice lines, without anyone being able to say how much, with whom, or since when. Checking invoiced prices means taking that comparison back, line by line, before payment.
What is checked
Six places where the invoiced price drifts from the negotiated price
Each gap has a name, a clause and a way of hiding. These are the ones the Compliance agent looks for first.
The base unit price
The price of the reference as it appears in the schedule, at the date of the invoiced line. The simplest gap, and the most repeated.
The discount and the volume tier
A conditional discount (on quantity, on cumulative value, on category) promised in the contract and absent from the invoice, or calculated on the wrong base.
Revision and indexation
An increase applied before the scheduled date, on the wrong index, or at a rate higher than the clause allows.
Ancillary charges
Delivery, packaging, handling, returns, urgency: invoiced although the contract provides free freight, or at an amount different from the one agreed.
Free items and promised credit notes
An item offered under the contract and invoiced anyway, a credit note granted on a dispute and never deducted from the next invoice.
The off-catalogue item
A reference that does not exist in the schedule, invoiced at a free price, when an equivalent under contract existed.
The mechanism
How the Compliance agent checks an invoiced price
- 01
Read the invoice line by line
Reference, description, quantity, unit, unit price, discount, charges, tax: each extracted value stays linked to the place in the document where it was read.
- 02
Find the applicable term
The contract, schedule, amendment or rate card in force at the invoice date, for this supplier, this entity and this reference, even when the description differs.
- 03
Calculate the gap
Invoiced price minus price due, discount included, charges included, multiplied by the quantity. The calculation is deterministic: the same case gives the same result six months from now.
- 04
Present the evidence
The clause and the line highlighted side by side, the amount at stake, the reason. A case matching no rule is raised with its reason, never silently.
Framework contract, price schedule, price list, amendment, discount terms: the reference confronted with the invoice.
What you receive
A summary ready to send, not a list of alerts
The output of the check is not a red dashboard. It is, per supplier, a file: the lines in discrepancy, the total amount, the clause invoked for each, and the original invoice one click away. That file is written to be read by someone who did not run the check: a buyer preparing a claim, an accountant waiting for a credit note, an auditor asking for the trail.
What Zylio does not do matters just as much. It does not contact the supplier. It does not block the payment in your ERP. It does not generate a credit note. It investigates the case and places it in front of the person with the authority to decide, with everything needed to settle it in minutes rather than days.
The contract clause and the invoice line, highlighted side by side.
What it changes
What systematic invoiced price control changes
First, scope: from 5% to 100% of your purchases checked, depending on what you decide to include. Teams often start with one supplier whose contract is dense (more than 12,000 price lines per framework contract is not a problem), then widen category by category.
Then margin, shown before being promised. On the scope analysed, between 1 and 7% of margin recovered: that figure corresponds to what was paid above the negotiated price and is documented, line by line. Recovery itself is negotiated with the supplier; Zylio provides the file, not the negotiation.
Finally time: 15 to 45% of time handed back to teams, per FTE, depending on the scope and the maturity of the data. The controller no longer rereads compliant invoices; they handle gaps already investigated. And the history of invoiced prices, by product, supplier, category or site, becomes the base for the next negotiation.
Typology, causes and prioritisation of price gaps, by supplier and by category.
Getting started
One or two months of invoices are enough to know
The 3-week diagnostic, on your data, starts from what you already have: a framework contract, its price schedule, and one or two months of invoices from the same supplier, exported from your ERP or uploaded as they are. Zylio reads them, checks the invoiced prices, and returns what was paid above the negotiated price, with the evidence. No connection to your system, no commitment, and no data used to train a model.
Scope, data requested, deliverable, success-based billing.
Compliance
Every invoice checked against your agreements.
Checks every invoiced line against what was negotiated: framework agreement, price list, rate schedule, amendment, discount terms, volume thresholds, indexation clauses.
A claim that is documented and enforceable against the supplier, not a hunch.
What Compliance detects
- Invoiced price higher than the negotiated price
- Revision outside its due date or on the wrong index
- Volume discount or tiered rate not applied
- Service outside the contract, item outside the catalogue
- Payment terms not honoured
- A one-cent discrepancy repeated across thousands of lines
Nothing is lost. Everything can be checked, everything can be proven.
- The contract clause and the invoice line, highlighted side by side.
- Every extracted value stays linked to the exact place in the document where it was read.
- The same case produces the same decision, today as in six months: the rules are applied deterministically.
- No discrepancy is set aside in silence. Anything that matches no rule is raised, with its reason.
- The agent records what it did, in the order it did it: who, what, how much, when.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between checking invoiced prices and matching invoices?
Matching verifies that the invoice corresponds to the order and the receipt: quantities, references, deliveries. Price checking verifies that the unit price, discount and charges correspond to the contract. An invoice can be perfectly matched and still invoiced at the wrong price.
What happens if the invoice description does not match the price schedule?
That is the most frequent case. The agent matches the supplier’s reference, unit and description to the schedule line, even when they differ, and states its confidence level. Below the threshold you set, the case is presented to a person instead of being settled.
Does Zylio contact the supplier to recover the overpayment?
No, never. Zylio produces the file: lines in discrepancy, amount, clause, invoice. The claim, the credit note or the offset on the next invoice are decided and carried out by your teams. No payment is blocked and no credit note is generated without your approval.
Do I need to connect Zylio to the ERP to check prices?
No. An invoice export and the contract are enough to start, and that is how the diagnostic runs. Reading through an API or a recurring export comes afterwards, if you wish; in every case Zylio reads and writes nothing into your system.
Measurable impact in every environment
More than 5 million procurement documents analysed
Between 1 and 7% of margin recovered
on the scope analysed
From 15 to 45% of time given back to teams, per FTE
depending on the scope and on data maturity
Zylio fits into your existing ecosystem.
The ERP runs the process. Zylio handles the exception and recovers the value that escapes it: invoices without a purchase order, line-by-line price discrepancies, duplicates and overbilling, off-contract spend.
Your data under high security.
Zylio meets the most demanding standards, and nothing is committed without your approval.
- Certifications
- Hosting
- Encryption
- Access
The other situations handled by the Compliance agent
- Negotiated price complianceEvery invoiced line checked against the framework agreement, the rate schedule and the discount terms; the discrepancy costed and linked to its clause.
- Framework contract complianceCheck volumes, revisions, penalties and execution terms against the signed contract, and prove every gap.
- BPU complianceCheck every invoiced line against the unit price schedule in force on its date, coefficients and revisions included, and prove every gap with the calculation.
- Framework contractsRead your framework contracts, check every invoice against the signed text and steer the execution of your agreements, with proof.
- Supplier price listsThe schedule of negotiated prices by reference and by period, checked against every invoice on the date of the line.
- The 3-week diagnosticMeasure on your invoices what was paid above the negotiated price.
See what this looks like on your own data
Twenty minutes, on a spend category of your choosing. We show you what the agents detect, with the evidence behind it.
- No commitment, on your own data
- Result in 3 weeks
- 20 minutes, no sales pitch
- Your data stays hosted in France
- No change of tool or process