In many ways, overpayments in an organisation’s ERP system are intangible, not noticed – and if left for too long – unrecoverable. It remains a fact that if you’re processing over 25,000 invoices a year, you will also be processing duplicates - great for your supplier, but not so great for you. In some cases, particularly where the relationship is well established, a supplier may highlight the error, but often it’s either overlooked by both parties, or wilfully ignored. In the latter case, sometimes it's not even thought of as fraud by the guilty party. Of course the onus should be on the paying organisation to ensure that their payment process is correct, but if the supplier notices, and then does nothing, then that is another issue entirely.

Regardless of the type of organisation – if you process invoices – you are also processing duplicates. In many cases the percentage of duplicates made is small. However, when an organisation makes over £50m in annual invoice payments, that small percentage could translate as £50,000 per year. In other words, it’s likely that every year, the AP Manager is heading a department which is costing the organisation as much, if not more, than their annual salary.

Guest contributor - Andrew Jesse, VP Basware UK

Overview of Duplicate Payments

Duplicate payments are an overpayment error occurring within the accounts payable department. The Institute of Internal Auditors suggests 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 organisation makes £50 million in annual invoice payments you are likely paying out £50,000 or more in duplicate payments per year.