What is duplicate payment detection?
Duplicate payment detection is the set of checks that stop a company paying the same supplier invoice twice. Software compares each new invoice and payment with earlier ones on supplier, invoice number, date and amount, including near matches such as a changed character or a supplier set up twice, and holds suspected duplicates for review.
Also calledduplicate invoice detection
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- Compares
- Supplier, number, date, amount
- Runs
- At entry and before payment
- Category
- AP, AR and payments
How duplicate payments happen and are caught
Duplicates come from ordinary causes: a supplier sends the same invoice by email and by post, a reminder is keyed as a new invoice, an invoice number is typed with a different prefix, or one supplier exists twice in the vendor master. Exact checks on invoice number catch only some of them, so detection tools also use fuzzy matching on number, amount and date, and flag suppliers that share bank details or a tax number. Checks run at three points: when an invoice is entered, before a payment run is released, and afterwards in recovery audits that search past payments. Money already paid comes back only if the supplier refunds it or offsets it against later invoices, so catching duplicates before payment matters most. AP platforms such as BILL, Tipalti and Coupa flag possible duplicates at invoice entry.
Common questions
What causes duplicate payments?+
Invoices received through more than one channel, statements or reminders keyed as invoices, typing differences in invoice numbers, and suppliers set up more than once. Manual payments made outside the normal run are another common cause.
What is fuzzy matching in duplicate detection?+
Comparing invoices that are similar rather than identical, such as INV-1001 and 1001, transposed digits, or the same amount and date from two supplier records. It catches duplicates that exact matching on invoice number misses.
What is a recovery audit?+
A review of past payments, often covering several years, to find duplicates, overpayments and missed credits and recover them from suppliers. It is usually done by specialist firms paid a share of what they recover.
Software that detects duplicate payments
Part of Accountio’s accounting technology coverage · Glossary
