Duplicate payments are a common issue in accounting and can lead to significant financial losses if not detected and corrected in time.
At the same time, duplicate payments are the most well-known form of overpayments—financial losses caused by excessive or incorrect payments of incoming invoices, incomplete or missing deductions of credit notes, or other invoice components in favor of the recipient.
Other forms of overpayments include:
■ Payment of an invoice to the wrong supplier
■ Overpaying an invoice
■ Missing deduction of import VAT
■ Missing deduction of input VAT
■ Unreceived credit notes for returns
■ Unreceived annual bonuses (rebates)
■ Failure to deduct cash discounts
■ Multiple payments of an invoice (e.g., paid three or four times)
■ Incorrectly booked credit notes
■ Unbooked credit notes
But let’s get back to the well-known issue of duplicate payments. There are several methods and strategies to identify and prevent them. Here are some proven approaches:
1. Supplier guidelines for invoice creation
Suppliers must receive clear guidelines on the layout and content of invoices and credit notes they submit. Often, a small percentage of suppliers use problematic layouts or frequently change them, which significantly increases the risk of booking errors. The format and details of credit notes should also be standardized and, for example, sufficiently distinct from invoices issued by the same supplier.
2. Clear policies for invoice entry
Employees should also be given clear guidelines on how to enter invoices or process pre-recorded invoices. The correct way to capture invoice components (such as numbers, dates, and amounts) and the required invoice elements must be well understood to prevent errors and financial losses.
3. Increased vigilance when system warnings occur
Ignoring warning messages ("clicking them away") is a common cause of errors. Even when a system control flags a potential mistake, users often dismiss it—assuming the system has misjudged the situation or due to repeated false alarms in the past. This should be avoided at all costs, as frequent warnings reduce user acceptance and increase the likelihood of real errors being overlooked. Finding the right balance is crucial: if system checks are too lenient (e.g., reviewing too few invoice components), excessive warning messages may appear—leading to user fatigue and decreased effectiveness.
4. Well-structured approval processes for payments
A decentralized invoice reception process combined with communication gaps within an unstructured or incomplete P2P (procure-to-pay) process often leads to errors like duplicate payments. Clear guidelines and processes for invoice verification and approval are essential. Each purchase, service, and invoice transaction should be uniquely identified and approved only once. The four-eyes principle is an effective way to improve accuracy and security in payment approvals. However, it can also be resource-intensive, requiring a balanced approach between efficiency and risk mitigation.
5. External expert reviews to assess error susceptibility
There are many ways to reduce potential errors, but a residual risk remains in every organization. This, combined with individual factors like human mistakes (see our article "Common causes of duplicate payments"), leads to a certain number of booking errors occurring each year.
An external expert analysis can help determine the extent of these errors—how many duplicate payments, incorrect transactions, missing or misrecorded credit notes, and overlooked tax or discount deductions have affected your company. We can conduct an overpayment check within just a few weeks—practically without any effort on your part. Since our fee is based solely on the refunds we recover for you, our service is completely cost- and risk-free
Conclusion
Duplicate payments can be effectively identified and prevented through a combination of clear process guidelines for internal and external stakeholders, technological solutions, and regular audits. This minimizes financial losses while improving the overall quality of accounting processes.
Founder and Managing Director
