What is GL Match?
GL Match is Harold's general ledger coding layer. Every invoice line needs a nominal code — the account code in your chart of accounts that tells your accounting system what kind of expense or income it represents. GL Match learns which codes you apply to which suppliers and line descriptions, then applies them automatically.
Without GL Match, every invoice line goes through a human who decides whether a particular purchase is office supplies or computer equipment. With GL Match, Harold makes that decision based on what you have done before.
How it works
GL Match works on historical patterns. You configure your chart of accounts — a list of your nominal codes and their descriptions — and Harold begins building a match model based on the documents you process.
When a new document arrives and Harold extracts a line item, it looks at the supplier name, the line item description, the line item category, and the amount. It then finds the closest historical match from documents you have already coded and applies the same nominal code, with a confidence score.
High-confidence matches are applied automatically. Low-confidence matches are flagged for human review. You confirm or correct them, and Harold learns from your decision.
Configuring your chart of accounts
Before GL Match can work, you add your nominal codes. This is a one-time setup where you enter each code, its name, and optionally a description. Harold uses the name and description to understand what kinds of transactions belong in each code — "Computer Equipment" tells it more than "5020" alone.
You can import your chart of accounts as a CSV if you have one from your accounting system.
What GL Match is not
GL Match is not an accounting system. It does not create journal entries, post transactions, or perform reconciliation. It assigns a code to a field in Harold's extracted output. What you do with that coded output — push it to Zapier, export it to CSV, review it manually — is entirely up to you.
It is also not a rules engine. If you need conditional logic ("always use code 7100 for utility invoices over £500 from Scottish Power") that belongs in the Rules Engine. GL Match handles the pattern-matching cases; the Rules Engine handles the exceptions and special cases.
Ease of use
GL Match requires an initial period of supervised operation. For the first few weeks, you will see frequent low-confidence flags — Harold does not have enough history yet to be certain. As you confirm or correct its suggestions, the accuracy improves rapidly. Most businesses find GL Match is largely autonomous after four to six weeks of regular use.
Limitations
GL Match works best for businesses with consistent, repeating suppliers and regular line item descriptions. If your document mix is highly variable — many one-off suppliers, freeform line descriptions — the match quality will be lower and more manual review will be needed.
GL Match is also per-organisation. Your coding patterns are your own and are never shared across Harold customers.
The aim
The goal of GL Match is to get to a state where the right nominal code is assigned to every line on every document without anyone having to think about it. Combined with Key Field Match handling supplier code translation and DocuTrain handling the extraction, GL Match is the final piece that makes Harold's output genuinely ERP-ready rather than just accurately extracted.