Press Releases

Accounts Payable Audit Software Helps Local Authorities Realise Cost Efficiencies But Still Make Prompt Payments
Warrington Borough Council brings duplicate invoice recovery and prevention in-house

Reading, UK – 5th March 2010: FISCAL Technologies, provider of world- class accounts payable audit software, now has over 40 local authorities using its AP Forensics® software.

Installing a software package like AP Forensics is proving increasingly important to public sector organisations which process tens of thousands of invoices each year and are a greater risk of duplicate payments, fraudulent activity and other errors. Local authorities are coming under particular pressure to deliver ever greater cost efficiencies and levels of financial control at the same time as making payments more quickly under the Government’s Prompt Payment Code initiative. In many cases this means paying smaller local suppliers in as little as 10 days, which once invoices have been through internal sign-off processes, can often leave Accounts Payable with no time to carry out extensive checks.

As a result, many local authority accounts payable teams are turning to specialist technology  like AP Forensics® to help them establish the delicate balance between delivering cost savings and maintaining control over the accounts payable process, as well as supporting local businesses by paying quickly.. Because it is is quick and easy to run – just an hour in most cases – it doesn’t become a time-consuming element in the whole process. Actually it is a net time saver as it reduces the number of credit notes and errors.

Warrington Borough Council is one local authority that took early steps to protect its purchase ledger team from accidental overpayments and is now reaping the benefits. It has been using FISCAL’s industry-leading accounts payable audit software for 5 years.

Alyson Wilkinson, Team Manager - Process Control for the Council’s Business Support Centre, states:“We were aware that, as our creditors’ team processes a large volume of invoices from a wide variety of different suppliers and are under considerable pressure to pay within 30 days, the potential risk of overpayment was a very real one in our department. We’ve been really pleased with FISCAL’s solution to our problem and Management were even more pleased when they discovered that the overpayments retrieved had recovered the cost of the software in a very short space of time!”

David Griffiths, FISCAL’s Director of Customer Development, said: “The problems faced by Warrington Borough Council were typical of many local authorities who manage large volumes of supplier invoices. They understood that even the best accounting systems and internal procedures won’t necessarily prevent all duplicate payments but that, by using specialist accounts payable audit software, they could catch these errors early and stop them costing the organisation large amounts of money. Furthermore, in these more compliance led times, AP Forensics® significantly raises the visibility of the AP function and its usage demonstrates a commitment to making every penny count.”

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About FISCAL Technologies

FISCAL Technologies Ltd, founded in 2002, provides world-class accounts payable audit software for corporations and government agencies to detect duplicate payments, fraud, invoicing errors and compliance issues. Organisations trust these solutions to meet their needs for cost reduction and increased control and protection of their working capital.

FISCAL’s AP Forensics® suite consists of three core modules to analyse invoices,
supplier accounts and VAT line items. Using industry-leading algorithms and pattern-matching technology, these modules have been designed specifically for Accounts Payable staff to easily run on a weekly or constant monitoring basis. They can work alongside any accounting system and have been used to scan hundreds of millions of transactions across the globe. For more information, please visit www.fiscaltec.co.uk or www.fiscaltec.com.

About AP Forensics®

AP Forensics works by analysing accounts payable transactions, processes, people and suppliers to avoid accidental duplicate payments, invoicing errors, compliance issues and supplier fraud. Most accounting systems are designed to carry out only basic checks, leaving a need for additional specialist software like AP Forensics to prevent large organisations losing sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.

For more information, please visit www.fiscaltec.co.uk or www.fiscaltec.com.