3 way matching is a payables control that is almost entirely determined by two habits belonging to other people. Somebody has to raise a purchase order before buying, and somebody has to record what arrived. Payables can perform the comparison flawlessly and still match nothing if either habit is missing, which is why improving matching usually starts with a conversation rather than a purchase.
Habit one: buying with an order
A threshold people know, a policy for what happens to invoices arriving without a reference, and enough speed in the approval process that raising an order is not a punishment. Organisations that enforce the policy without fixing the speed get resentment and workarounds; those that fix the speed first usually find enforcement is barely needed.
Habit two: recording what arrived
Whoever takes the delivery records it, at the time, against the order line. This is usually an operational person with no interest in payables, so it has to take seconds and work on whatever device is to hand. Batching receipts into finance weekly adds a week to every invoice for no benefit anybody would defend if it were stated plainly.
What payables controls
Tolerance, the exception routing and the ageing. Setting tolerance from evidence rather than default, routing each exception to whoever can resolve it, and ageing the queue so nothing sits invisibly. Those three are entirely within the team's gift and they determine how much work the failures generate, even when the failure rate itself is set upstream.
Questions people ask about 3 way matching in accounts payable
Can we match without goods receipts?
Only two-way, against the order. That is correct for services and leaves goods unprotected against paying for something that never arrived.
How do we get operational staff to record receipts?
Make it take seconds on a phone, and show them why it matters, usually by explaining that it is what stops suppliers being paid for undelivered goods.
What is a reasonable match rate?
Measure your own purchase-order and receipt coverage first, since that is the ceiling. Any external benchmark is describing a different organisation's upstream discipline.