Recovering $50K in 6 Months by Closing a Payment Blind Spot
The Challenge
A retail business with $15M in annual revenue was approving vendor payments based on verbal confirmations from the purchasing team — leaving it fully exposed to invoice fraud, overcharges, and double-billing.
What We Did
We ran a retroactive audit of $3M in purchases and implemented a strict three-way matching process — cross-referencing purchase orders against warehouse receipts and final vendor invoices. We verified vendor statements against bank records and migrated the workflow into QuickBooks Online for real-time, automated oversight.
The Result
- Identified and recovered $50,000 in clawbacks from a single six-month window.
- Left the client with an airtight, automated internal-control system.
- Permanently prevented overpayment leakage going forward.
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Book a Free CallWhy “Paying on Trust” Is One of the Most Expensive Habits in Business
When invoices are approved on verbal confirmation rather than verification, a business is exposed to overbilling, duplicate invoices, and outright fraud — losses that hide inside perfectly normal-looking accounts payable. A three-way match, cross-checking the purchase order against the goods actually received and the final invoice, is a basic control that catches these discrepancies before the money ever leaves the account.
Signs this may be happening in your business:
- Payments approved verbally, or by a single person with no second check
- Invoices that are never matched to purchase orders and receipts
- Vendor statements that are never reconciled against your own records
- Accounts payable rising with no controls around it
We audit historical spend for recoverable overpayments, put a strict three-way match in place, reconcile vendor statements to your bank records, and move the workflow into software so the control runs automatically every month. It's an unglamorous fix that pays for itself fast.