Duplicate Payment Audit

Introduction

A duplicate payment audit is the process of reviewing accounts payable transactions of an organization to identify and recover any payments that were made more than once to the same vendor or for the same invoice. Duplicate payments can happen due to various reasons, such as data entry errors, invoice number variations, currency differences, vendor name changes, etc.

The sheer volume of invoices can make duplicate payments inevitable in larger organisations. In our experience, duplicate payments occur for one or more of the following reasons:

• Data entry errors - when employees are manually creating hundreds of invoices a day, a loss of concentration may cause them to misread information or make typos
• Supplier duplicates - multiple suppliers within the organization’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system may lead to duplicate invoices being generated
• Travel and expenses reimbursement - claims made twice by staff, whether accidental or fraudulent, are hard to monitor, especially as the individual amounts are usually small
• Paying from multiple source documents - if two separate source documents are submitted for a single payment, you can almost guarantee that payment will be duplicated
• Invoices sent via different methods - duplicates can occur if the same invoice is sent in multiple formats (post, fax and email)
• Lack of purchase order (PO) number - duplicate payments may occur if the supplier does not include the PO, because they may submit a copy of the same invoice (this time including the PO number) when they realize the first has not been paid
• Technological failure in a used payment system - glitches or malfunctions in the payment software or hardware can cause duplicate transactions or charges
• Human error, by forgetfulness or disorganization - consumers may pay the same bill twice if they do not keep track of their payments or receipts
• Flaws in an entity's accounts payable processes that do not detect the presence of prior payments - inadequate internal controls, policies or procedures can lead to missed opportunities to prevent or identify duplicate payments
• Fraudulent activity by employees within an organization - some employees may intentionally create or approve duplicate payments for personal gain or to cover up other irregularities

What we do

We provide an expert audit of the clients' accounts payable records, and as part of this audit, we:

• Identify potential duplicated payments using our bespoke softwares and techniques
• Review the relevant transactions so as to confirm them as bonafide duplicates against copy invoices
• Arrange sufficient association with the client so as to efficiently collect on their behalf
• Contact suppliers and confirm with them the existence of the duplicate payment and arrange return to the clients accounts
• Create bespoke reporting on teh collections and present them to the client for confirmation confirming the amount to be paid to us for the collected profits

Our approach is client-focused and highly flexible. We take into account every clients' individual needs.

The process

1. Obtain data: We collaborate with your accounts and/or IT teams to get the data we need fast and thoroughly. The effective verification of your accounts payable processes allows us to find and match all duplicate payments with credit notes, refunds and off-sets. We then concentrate on collecting the remaining duplicates.
2. Conduct review: We mostly conduct our review away from your system, location and view; based on our experience, your staff will only need to spend one or two days on the whole project.
3. Recover lost profits: We not only find possible duplicates, but also collect them for you; we also produce suitable documents to record the collections in your books. We can also offer you various management reports for free, showing past mistakes, but also revealing system flaws.