I recently read an article about a woman who stole $57K from her former Massachusetts employer.  While the amount stolen was not millions of dollars, I think the example of HOW she stole the money will be of interest to anyone in accounts payable...

Purchase orders are considered a good internal control mechanism, right?  Even introductory accounting and auditing classes teach the value of “two-way matches” and “three-way matches”.   Would it surprise you if I told you that 41% of all of the validated duplicate payments made by our clients were PO related?  I believe in the value of using purchase orders but think organizations place an over-reliance on the control they bring...  

While most companies will agree that performing a recovery audit is a best practice, I am amazed at how many large companies ($1b and higher) I speak with that have not performed a recovery engagement within the past three years. While this is not based on a formal study, I would estimate that 1 out of 4 companies I have spoken with have not performed an audit in at least three years. I find this quite surprising. But what you may find even more surprising (or not) are some of the reasons.

This question came to my mind after hearing multiple companies state it is a Sarbanes-Oxley requirement that they perform a recovery audit every one, two, or three years. As a company that provides recovery audit services and solutions, you would think this would put a smile on my face. But many years ago I was also an external auditor and CPA. So, it got me thinking about Sarbanes-Oxley, the COSO framework, and the overall spirit of SOX...

We have a client who has been using SAP for many years and has recently implemented a third party imaging and workflow system.  This company was really in need of this system.  The imaging solution uses OCR (optical character recognition) to systematically pull off the invoice number, invoiced date, and amount.  I am a big proponent of implementing imaging and workflow as it greatly increases efficiency in A/P and the entire organization.  However, as with any new technology that gets implemented, there are always hiccups...

 This is my first video blog.  It's a 9 minute video on the basics of how duplicate payments happen.  This video is intended for those people who may be new to Accounts Payable, work with Accounts Payables, or are just curious.

The IRS TIN Matching service is a valuable tool that every A/P manager should know about.  This free-of-charge e-service allows ‘authorized payers’, defined by the IRS as one who has filed information returns with the IRS in at least one of the two past tax years,  to match 1099 payee information against IRS records prior to filing information returns...

I was recently speaking with a financial executive at a billion dollar plus company and I was surprised to hear him say that he didn't feel his company could have a duplicate payment issue because they were SOX certified and used the most expensive accounts payable system.  Anyone who actually enters A/P transactions into any accounts payable system, be it the most expensive accounts payable system or not, knows that SOX procedures and your accounts payable system are just two of the many controls necessary to stop duplicate payments...