The Five Most Common Accounts Payable Mistakes

Many businesses with ERP systems and AP automation platforms falsely believe they will prevent cash leakage. But duplicate entries, overpayments, and fraud are still slipping through.

• For every 10,000 invoices processed, nearly 200 will be a duplicate or erroneous payment.
• For every $100M in annual revenue, companies lose $5M to fraud.
• Internal fraud often happens by an employee who has been there 6-7 years.

Even the simplest keying errors can cause unnecessary cash leakage and impact your bottom line. Let’s look at the top five most common accounts payable mistakes found among our clients.

Top 5 AP Mistakes Found 

5.Voucher outliers ($39M)

Voucher outliers are items that were overpaid. Overpayment happens for several reasons including a simple keying error or a unit of measure error. For example, a client wanted to buy 3 boxes of paper but accidentally selected three box cars of paper. An outlier of $30,000 of paper expense was flagged by the system as out of normal for that type of purchase and we were able to catch it before a payment was made.

4. Unusual vouchers / anomalies ($61M)

This is where AI becomes valuable in finding inconsistencies in the data. The anomalies may be an OCR error, invoice number error, external fraud, or business email compromise. The AI catches the incongruencies and flags it for review.

3. Purchase Order issues ($74M)

Purchase order issues can include errors in numbers or amounts, an invoice that comes in without a PO, or a split purchase.

2. Duplicate vouchers and overpayments ($132M)

Customers put in new systems like AP automation and think the vendor portal will reduce the number of voucher errors, but the vendor is still affected by user error. Keep in mind, vendors can key in duplicates or make the same errors an internal person would.

1. Split invoices ($145M)

The number one AP mistake we saw in 2022 was split purchases. A split purchase often results from employees trying to circumvent controls within the organization. For the employee to get the full purchase amount approved, they split the invoice, so each invoice is below the threshold.

Oversight can help you catch what is slipping past your controls. Schedule a demonstration to learn more.