How to Handle Remittance with Incorrect Invoice Numbers

When remittance advice contains wrong or mismatched invoice numbers, Remittance Go helps you identify and correct them before pushing the payment to Xero.

Why Invoice Numbers Can Be Wrong

Invoice numbers on remittance PDFs are incorrect more often than you might expect. The most common causes are:

• Human error — a supplier types the wrong number when preparing the remittance
• Software appending extra characters — your invoice INV-123 arrives as INV-123xab1 after passing through the supplier's system
• Formatting mismatches — your Xero invoice is INV-123 but the remittance shows INV123 (missing the hyphen), or vice versa

Remittance Go displays invoice numbers exactly as they appear in the PDF. This is intentional — applying automatic corrections in the background could make it hard to compare what you see on screen against the original document.

How to Fix Incorrect Invoice Numbers

Remittance Go gives you two ways to correct invoice numbers, depending on how many lines need fixing and how straightforward the errors are.

1. Edit Manually

You can type the correct invoice number directly into the field. This approach is completely reliable — what you type is what gets matched — but it can be slow if you have many lines that are each slightly off.

Use manual editing when:

• Only a handful of lines need correcting
• The error is unique or doesn't follow a predictable pattern

2. Magic Repair

The Magic Repair button runs an algorithm that compares the invoice numbers on the remittance against your outstanding invoices in Xero and attempts to find the best match for each one automatically.

This can resolve the majority of common errors — including formatting mismatches and minor character differences — in a single click.

Use Magic Repair when:

• Multiple lines have similar or systematic errors
• The errors follow a recognisable pattern (e.g., missing hyphens, extra suffixes)

Keep in mind that Magic Repair may not handle every edge case. If a line remains unmatched after running it, fall back to editing that line manually.