To err is human, even for humans who work in the accounts group. Sooner or later, someone is going to make a mistake paying an invoice, and it will cost you. That’s obvious: it’s just the law of averages. The question is, how often will it happen and what will the overall cost be to your company? Intuitively, you might think it’s minimal, but the reality is quite different. Industry estimates calculate that one in every thousand transactions is an overpayment. There are many different reasons this can occur, but the most frequent is duplicate payments – where, by accident or dishonest design, the same invoice is paid twice. One in a thousand may not seem like a lot, but it all adds up. And if you’re a business that relies on very large volumes of minor transactions – high numbers of low-margin payments – then you could be in a lot of trouble. Recovery audit software will highlight where this is happening and help you claim back the money paid, assuming you act quickly. An accounts payable audit shows you who still owes you money that, due to oversight or problems in your accounting systems, has never been collected.
The larger your company, the greater this problem is likely to be – and not just because it means a larger number of transactions to go wrong. When you are making and receiving a lot of payments, it gets harder and harder to pinpoint the incorrect ones. These could be due to genuine misunderstanding, or occasionally fraud. If a supplier is sending the same invoice every month, it gets easier to send in a repeat which slips under the radar: the source of many duplicate payments. Of course, the same thing can happen through forgetfulness or accident. Either way, you’ll end up overpaying unless someone recognises it, and in a busy accounts department there’s no way that someone will be able to remember and verify all of your payments personally. That’s why recovery audit software can be so useful, usually paying for itself the first time you use it. And problems with your accounts cut both ways. You may be overpaying other people, and your customers and others could be underpaying you. These payments can become mislaid in the system, with nothing in place to chase them up. An accounts payable audit seeks out the offenders and ensures that they settle their bills.
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