Supplier statements are an important external validation of your accounting records.

You should compare the purchase invoices, less credit notes and payments on account, listed on the supplier statement with the statement of outstanding invoices, less credit notes and payments on account, listed on the supplier statement report on your system.

If these are the same, then you can be confident that you are not missing any supplier invoices, and all the payments you have made to the supplier have been received.

Where there are invoices or credit notes on the supplier statement which do not appear on your system then you should first confirm whether they have already been marked off as paid on your system, in which case no action is necessary, else you should request copies from the supplier, and then process these in the normal way and query as appropriate.

Where there are invoices or credit notes on your system which do not appear on the supplier statement then you should first check that these have not been duplicated on your system, and if they have you will need to clear them with an equal and opposite transaction, that is a duplicated invoice should be cleared by a credit note and vice versa, but if not duplicates then you should contact the supplier for clarification that their statement is complete and accurate.

Where payments to the supplier appear on your system but not on the supplier statement it could simply be that at the time the supplier created the statement your payment had not been received and there is therefore no action needed; however if the payment is old then you should confirm whether it has been bank reconciled.

If it has been bank reconciled then it is possible that the supplier has misallocated your payment, possibly to another customer account in their records, so it would be worthwhile contacting the supplier in order to track down the payment.

If the payment has not been bank reconciled, then it is possible that the payment has been lost or rejected, and you should consider contacting your bank to clarify why the payment has not been made.

Other discrepancies may require assistance from your accountant to resolve.