Duplicate Payments – Are they losing your business money?
In every line of business, a yearly accounts payable audit has to be carried out. If conducted properly, this audit will probably uncover a great number of errors, such as data entry mistakes, duplicate payments, duplicate invoices, and duplicate purchase orders. Duplicate payments and Acconts Payable Audit software can simplify many of the auditing processes and give your business tighter control over the process than if an external team of auditors is brought in to do the work.
According to the Institute of Management and Administration (the IMA) the errors made in the accounting process get proportionately more numerous as the size of the company increases. This is true even if the company has good accounting systems in place. Take duplicate payments for example: the Institute of Internal Auditors (the IIA, established in 1941 to provide dynamic leadership to the internal auditing process), no less, has calculated that as many as one in every one thousand payments could be a duplicate. This means that if your company spends fifty million pounds annually, then it is probably losing fifty thousand pounds or more each year. Often the number of these incorrect payments that are made by a business is underestimated because the problem is only uncovered when a supplier returns a payment. In addition, it is often assumed that existing processes and systems catch all these erroneous payments. In the present economic climate ensuring that your company is getting value for money is very important.
Within the medical profession it is regularly said when talking about illness that prevention is better than cure. Although incorrect payments by your business can in some cases eventually be recovered, it will save your company time and money if the accounts department are proactive and gimlet-eyed in dealing with invoices. Accounts software can be very helpful here, giving increased control over the accounts process and reducing the number of mistakes. Another great benefit of such software is that it can be used with little or no training, making it ideal for all accounts departments.
Using such software, an accounts payable audit can be carried out much more often and rapidly than normal. Along with recovery audit software these kinds of software are freeing up the days and hours of your employees to continue with their day to day jobs and they are also preventing the accounts errors which can be so costly.
Duplicate payments are almost inevitable using traditional procedures, this type of software can help to stamp them out.