In The Netherlands, and if I am not mistaken in whole of Europe, when an invoice (goods and cost) is received we need to make an accrual and a VAT registration in the general ledger, just like the AP Invoice Register does it. After making the registration you want to match the goods invoices with PO's and the Cost invoices sometimes with PO's or have them coded and approved for final booking.

This is where things go wrong, of course you can match, but then you need the vendor pending invoices, this is not connected to the invoice register so you do not get an accrual and vat booking until the final approval and posting of the pending vendor invoice. From legal perspective (also IFRS and GAAP) this is not allowed..

For the cost invoices there is no decent way to route the invoice through the organization with employees codong (assigning the proper separtment/cost center/etc) and approving the invoice.

This is not world class finance, from a legislation point of view but also from a compete point of view! Every serious financial system offers proper invoice registration and matching functionality in one process. So Receive the invoice, register it, post it to the GL with VAT posting, match/code/approve, final posting.