Understanding exact matching using direct match

  • 05/11/2025
  • 3 minutes to read

By setting up payment reference rules, you can define how payment references are validated, matched, and processed within your system. These rules help automate reconciliation by identifying key elements within payment references, such as document numbers, customer identifiers, or payment indicators.

As part of this setup, you can enable Direct Match to match an entire payment reference directly to a field in Business Central without extracting substrings or performing additional parsing. This method is ideal for consistent reference formats where the payment reference is expected to exactly match a value in your system, such as invoice or customer numbers.

Tip

Use Direct Match when the payment reference in the bank statement is stable and predictable. If your references include prefixes, suffixes, or embedded data use substring extraction instead.

To enable Direct Match:

  1. Open your payment reference rule, and on the Matching FastTab, enable Direct Match.
  2. Specify the following:
    • Match to Table – for example, Customer Ledger Entry.
    • Match to Field – for example, Document No..
  3. Optionally, define a validation pattern (regex) to ensure the reference follows your numbering format.
  4. Save the rule and test it using sample bank statement lines.

Note

When Direct Match is enabled, the system compares the entire payment reference against the selected field. The Reference Start Position and Reference Length fields are automatically cleared and ignored.

Example: Invoice number matching

If payment references always contain the invoice number (for example, 102345), you can configure Direct Match to link payments directly to invoices.

  • Enable Direct Match.
  • Set Match to Table = Customer Ledger Entry.
  • Set Match to Field = Document No..
  • Optionally, apply a validation pattern such as ^[0-9]{6}$ to ensure a six-digit invoice number format.

When a payment reference is processed, the system compares the full reference to the Document No. field. If a match is found, the transaction is automatically reconciled.

Setting up a payment reference rule
Default payment reference rules
Configuring check digit validation
Payment reference rule examples
Payment reference rules FAQ