Duplicate Payments

Duplicate payments are one of several types of overpayment errors that occur within the accounts payable management department. The Institute of Internal Auditors have found that duplicate payments make up between 0.5% and 0.1% of annual invoice payments which means one in a 1000 payments could be a duplicate. If your organization makes $50 million in annual invoice payments you are likely paying out $50,000 or more in duplicate payments per year (www.theiia.org).

Although the number and size is typically less than compliance or pricing errors this type of overpayment is the most feared by accounts payable management as the responsibility is on them to ensure these errors do not happen.

How Do They Occur?

ERP or payments platforms should have the controls in place to flag, track or catch duplicate payments. Yet, the likelihood of human error means none of the packages are sophisticated enough to prevent more than about 70% occurrence.

The Institute of Management and Administration (www.ioma.com) acknowledges that "Completely eliminating duplicate payments may be an impossible dream".

A typical invoice entry includes an invoice number, date, amount, vendor number and many other fields. If any of these fields are entered inaccurately or inconsistently, the system’s inherent check for duplicate payment will not be effective. Add to this fact there might not be a defined invoice numbering system it’s understandable to see how overpayments can slip through the net.

FISCAL Technologies is the only organization to focus only on duplicate payment detection software. We have analyzed client data from all the major financial systems and in 100% of cases we have discovered accidental duplicate payments that they were unaware of.

To find out how you can prevent your duplicate payments [GO].