Duplicate Payments

Duplicate Invoice

A duplicate payment to a supplier can often be found, despite having well designed controls. Strong internal controls can bring error rates for duplicate invoice payments to well under one percent. But even automated system controls have their limitations. Various reasons explain this, such as multiple platforms and various data center locations. These locations and platforms may not be integrated. In addition, there is the possibility of intentional overrides (which may be allowed by the system), human error, inadequate system edits, etc.

The value of this analysis is to recover overpayments.

Duplicate Payment

Testing for duplicate payments always has potential for high payback. The steps needed are to first set objectives and then identify potential duplicates through various categorizations. Then use screens or scripts to identify the potential duplicates.

Other Considerations

Besides the obvious duplicates, you should also assess the "near misses". Another technique to consider is relative value which can be determined as part of the outlier evaluation process. (For example, the mis-keying of $23.59 as $2,359 would be caught using the relative value technique).

Approaches

Various considerations should be taken into account when selecting between the primary approaches:
Database
SpreadSheet
Script

Web Page last updated on 03-02-2007
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