Catching Invoice vs. Posting Period Errors Before They Derail Your Close

You don’t notice it until it bites you: a late invoice sneaks in, you post it without catching the mismatch, and suddenly you’re chasing down why your AP aging reports look off or why your GL doesn’t tie out at month-end.

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That’s the reality in most ERPs. Closed periods are supposed to give you clean books, but AP doesn’t stop operating neatly on a calendar. Vendors send invoices late, approvals drag out, and you’re left backdating or making adjustments that throw off reporting accuracy.

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The Problem in Real Life

Imagine your controller closes January, confident everything’s tidy. Two weeks later, accounts payable enters an invoice dated January 28th. The posting period in your ERP is already February. If no one catches it, you now have an invoice with a posting date in February but a document date in January. To the ERP, it’s “valid.” To your reporting, it’s noise.

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Downstream consequences:

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Cash flow forecasting looks off. That January expense won’t show where it should.
Month-end adjustments pile up. Controllers have to reopen periods or create messy accruals.
Audit trails get ugly. You’re left explaining why the same vendor has invoice dates in January but postings in February.

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What Centime Does Differently

Instead of letting those slips slide into your ledger, Centime flags the mismatch as it happens: “Hey, this invoice date doesn’t align with the posting period.”

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It sounds small—just an alert—but in practice it changes behavior:

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AP clerks get guardrails. They know instantly when they’re about to push something into the wrong period.
Controllers stay sane. No more combing through mismatches after the fact.
Reporting integrity holds. Your cash flow and expense recognition stay in the right buckets.

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Why This Matters More Than You Think

We’ve seen teams spend hours every close just chasing these errors. It’s not the big, obvious misses that kill efficiency; it’s the accumulation of micro-errors. A handful of posting date mismatches a month creates reconciliation work that compounds.

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This is the kind of “moment” that’s invisible until you fix it. And once you experience having the system guard against it, you wonder how you ever worked without it.

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A Quick Tip From the Field

When you roll this out, don’t just tell AP teams “the system will warn you.” Train them on why it matters. Show them the ripple effect: late postings lead to reopened periods, reopened periods delay reporting, delayed reporting frustrates leadership. When the connection is clear, adoption isn’t an issue—they actually welcome the alert.

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These are the kinds of micro-automations that keep your finance team out of the weeds and your reporting clean. Want to see how Centime handles posting period errors (and dozens of other hidden AP headaches) in real time? Book a demo with our team.

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*All banking products and services available through Centime are provided by FNBO and are governed by the applicable agreements and related disclosures provided to you by FNBO. Member FDIC.
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*Centime may provide support services to FNBO, as permitted by applicable law, to facilitate the delivery of its bank products and services.

**Deposit placement through ICS is subject to the terms, conditions, and disclosures in the applicable agreements. Although deposits are placed in increments that do not exceed the FDIC standard maximum deposit insurance amount (“SMDIA”) at any one destination bank, a depositor’s balances at the institution that places deposits may exceed the SMDIA (e.g., before settlement for deposits or after settlement for withdrawals) or be uninsured (if the placing institution is not an insured bank). The depositor must make any necessary arrangements to protect such balances consistent with applicable law and must determine whether placement through ICS satisfies any restrictions on its deposits. A list identifying IntraFi network bank

Catching Invoice vs. Posting Period Errors Before They Derail Your Close

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