Purchase Card (P-CARD) Transactions & Duplicate Payments

There are a growing number of companies that are adopting the use of Purchase Cards (P-Cards) as an option to pay their supply chain vendors for smaller dollar transactions. This method of payment can provide efficiency savings exceeding 50% from the traditional Accounts Payable process.

REAP THE BENEFITS OF P-CARD USAGE, BUT MITIGATE THE RISKS.

Some tangible and intangible benefits which accompany a P-Card payment process for the end-user include:

• Simplified payment process
• Electronic payments
• Faster payment delivery
• Mailing and payment handling cost reductions
• Strengthening supplier relationships due to timely payments
• One monthly payment to the card issuer instead of numerous payments to many different suppliers
• P-Card monetary rewards in the form of rebates which can turn a company’s Accounts Payable cost center into a revenue generator

ASSOCIATED P-CARD TRANSACTION DUPLICATE PAYMENT RISKS

While P-Card payments do have many benefits, this form of payment processing certainly does not eliminate the need and use for traditional Accounts Payable payment practices. In fact, the implementation of a P-Card payments to the payables process can introduce the additional risk of duplicating a payment to a supplier.

If a company pays for a product or service by both P-Card and the traditional Accounts Payable process, the duplicate payment can be missed for various reasons:

• Payments may have different vendor names
• Vendor numbers will not match
• Transaction dates may be different
• Transaction amounts can be different (i.e.: the P-Card payment could cover multiple invoices)

Even the strongest internal control procedures will not totally eliminate the potential for double paying a supplier.

HOW DOES YOUR COMPANY RECAPTURE THESE DUPLICATE PAYMENTS?

If your company benefits from the utilization of P-Card supplier payments, it is important that you review for duplicate payments. When choosing a recovery audit firm, you should ensure that the firm has the following skills:

• Ability to acquire the proper and full set of data from your company’s P-Card transaction institution
• Ability to process, mine, and validate the P-Card data with your traditional payables data
• Ability to merge the AP data and P-Card transaction data sets, eliminate the noise, and identify true duplicate payments between AP and P-Card
• Provide recommendations to eliminate future profit leakage

LET SAS HELP YOU RECAPTURE P-CARD DUPLICATE PAYMENTS.

Recover P-Card Overpayments