Accounts Payable Internal Checklist
Obligation to Pay Controls
Obligation to Pay controls are the main defense against AP fraud and mistakes. These important controls make sure that the correct people are paid the correct amount.
This section is composed of 4 controls:
-
PO approval
-
Invoice approval
-
Three-way matching
-
Duplicate payment search
Payment Controls
AP Payment is without a doubt the most fraud-prone area of any AP process. Because of this, most AP controls fall under this section. There are a lot of factors to consider in this step, including who makes the payments, how those payments are processed, and determining if further signoffs are needed.
If you’re doing this manually, you’ll need to focus on finding fraud in the stacks of paper documents. But if you’ve automated your accounts payable, it becomes substantially easier to avoid invoice fraud as there are safeguards built into your automated solution.
Fraud Prevention Controls
It’s no easy feat to catch accounts payable invoice fraud before it occurs and even more difficult to regain the money after it’s been paid. But Automated AP solutions includes extensive verification protocols to ensure that all invoices are correct, making it virtually impossible to pay duplicate or fake invoice. Everything becomes audited, including:
- Receipt, contract, and PO matching
- Vendor name verification
- Vendor address verification
- Checking for duplicate invoices.