Duplicate payments are one of the most common yet overlooked sources of financial leakage inside organizations. Many leaders assume these errors start in accounts payable (AP), but a large portion actually comes from expense management, where manual submissions, inconsistent workflows, weak policy controls, and fragmented systems make duplicate charges easy to miss.
Research shows that duplicate payments aren’t rare exceptions; they’re a predictable outcome of manual processes. According to American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) research, organizations see 0.8%–2% of total disbursements as duplicate or erroneous payments. The Institute of Finance and Management (IOFM) reports that companies may lose up to 1.5% of outgoing cash flow to duplicate payments alone. For mid-market and enterprise businesses, those numbers scale quickly.
Duplicate payments occur when a company pays the same invoice or expense more than once. Common causes include:
When AP, corporate card data, and employee expenses sit in separate tools, duplicate payments become nearly impossible to catch manually.
Even small duplicate payment rates translate into larger losses.
Using industry benchmarks:
For a company with $10M in annual spend, that could mean $80,000 to $200,000+ lost every year - much of it is completely avoidable.
Fraudsters know manual AP and expense workflows are vulnerable. Without protection, companies face:
IOFM notes that duplicate payments often stem from weak audit controls and siloed systems which are exactly the conditions that increase fraud exposure.
Each duplicate payment creates ripple effects:
Overpaying vendors can lead to:
Traditional AP teams often get blamed for duplicate payments, but research and industry analysis show that expense management plays a major role.
Employees often submit expenses through:
When you spread spending across multiple systems, you create blind spots where duplicate payments slip through unnoticed.
Even the best AP teams struggle to identify at scale:
Without help from automation, your reviewers simply can’t see every pattern.
The most effective organizations use automations, policies, and centralized workflows to prevent duplicate payments.
Automation tools (like ExpensePoint) use:
These capabilities dramatically reduce duplicate payment risk long before AP processes the payment.
Effective duplicate detection systems identify:
These tools flag similarities even when details are slightly modified.
One of the biggest drivers of duplicate payments is fragmented spending tools.
Centralization prevents:
When you bring your expenses and card transactions into a single system, you restore full visibility.
Policies work best when they support automated controls. Examples include:
With the right configuration, your system enforces these rules automatically.
Even with automation, regular interna; audits provide an extra safeguard. Audits help you catch:
Many finance teams ask about the correct accounting for AP processes.
The double entry for accounts payable is:
If your team processes a duplicate payment, you double-record the expense. That overstates total expenses and creates reconciliation challenges later. Automated systems prevent duplicates from ever entering the ledger.
ExpensePoint helps organizations prevent duplicate payments through technology and workflow controls such as:
By eliminating manual processes and unifying expense data, ExpensePoint significantly reduces duplicate payments and minimizes financial risk.
Duplicate payments may appear to be small errors, but they add up to major financial loss; often 1–2% of company spend, according to industry benchmarks.
By adopting automation, using duplicate detection technology, and centralizing expense data, organizations can fully prevent duplicate payments and protect their bottom line.
If your company is ready to eliminate duplicate payment risk and tighten financial controls, ExpensePoint provides the tools you need. Request your ExpensePoint demo today