An accounts payable audit tests whether the company paid the right vendor the right amount, once, for goods or services it received and approved, and recorded each payment in the right period. An accounts payable audit checklist lists those tests with the records each one compares and the evidence an auditor will ask to see.
In Rever, these checks run on your connected records as bills and payments land, and an agent owns each one. The zero-day scan makes the first pass over those records once read-only access is in place, and the zero-day scan article sets out how that compares with an accounts payable recovery audit. Run the table by hand on a sample, or download it as a CSV.
The accounts payable audit checklist
| Check | What you compare | Evidence to keep | Agent that runs it continuously |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duplicate payments | Vendor, invoice number, amount, date and service period across bills and payments, including near matches under different numbers | Both invoices, both payments, and the hold, refund or credit that cleared the duplicate | Spend Guard |
| Price drift against PO or contract | Invoiced unit price and total against the purchase order or contract price in force on the invoice date | The order, the contract or amendment, the invoice and the price calculation | Spend Guard, with Matcher |
| Unclaimed rebates and credits | Rebate tiers, early-payment discounts and open vendor credits against what the vendor paid or credited | Contract terms, the eligible purchases and the claim calculation | Entitlement |
| Three-way match exceptions | Order, receipt and invoice on quantity, price and dates, within your tolerance | The three documents, the tolerance applied and how each exception was resolved | Matcher, with Investigator |
| Missing supporting documents | Each paid invoice against the order, receipt, contract and approval it needs | A list of payments without full support and the request for each missing document | Evidence, with Matcher |
| Unmatched bank and processor items | Bank, card and processor activity against the payments and receipts in the ledger | The statement line, the ledger entry and the explanation for each open item | Matcher |
| Accruals that should have reversed | Last period's accruals against this period's reversals and the invoices that arrived | The accrual schedule, the reversing entry and the matching invoice | Close Orchestrator, with Journal |
| Short payments and deductions, scored for validity | Each customer short payment or deduction against the invoice, the agreement and delivery evidence | The remittance, the agreement and the validity call on each deduction | Deduction |
| Contract escalators and expired discounts not invoiced | Contractual price changes and discount end dates against what you billed customers | The contract, the price schedule and the invoices issued after the change | Revenue Assurance |
| Vendor master changes | New vendors and changed bank details or addresses against the change history and an independent authorisation | The change request, the callback record and the approver | Sentinel |
| Approvals | Each invoice and payment against the approval limits and sequence in your policy, including payments split under a limit | The approval record, the policy version and any override | Sentinel |
| Segregation of duties | Who created the vendor, entered the invoice, approved it and released the payment | User role reports and the approval history | Sentinel |
| Cut-off | Receipt and service dates against the period that holds the invoice or accrual | Receiving records around period end and the accrual listing | Matcher, with Close Orchestrator |
Download the checklist (CSV) Download the checklist (Excel)
The checks that find money
The first three lines find cash a vendor owes you back. A duplicate payment audit looks for the same invoice keyed twice, a resent invoice under a new number, or one service period billed by a vendor with two master records. Spend Guard runs it across orders, bills and payments and separates a valid recurring charge from an unintended duplicate. Rever's paper on stopping repeat overpayments before the payment run covers duplicate payments in depth.
Price drift and unclaimed rebates need the contract open beside the invoice. Spend Guard compares unit prices with the order and the contract and separates drift from volume, mix and timing changes. Entitlement rebuilds the eligible purchases from your vendor terms, recomputes the rebates and credits due and checks them against what the vendor paid. What an AP recovery audit costs covers the fee an outside firm charges for the same work.
The two customer-side lines, short payments and unbilled escalators, sit outside a strict payables audit. They stay on the list because the same contracts run through receivables, where Deduction and Revenue Assurance test them.
The checks that find fixes
Missing documents, unreversed accruals and unmatched bank items correct the books, and in most cases no cash comes back. An item that sits unmatched for months often ends in a suspense account, and an accrual that never reversed overstates expense until someone clears it. Rever reports accounting corrections under errors corrected, apart from value recovered.
Three-way match exceptions can go either way. Matcher compares the documents field by field, and Investigator reads the amendment or change order behind a mismatch. Invoice reconciliation software, field by field walks through one exception from invoice to approved entry.
The controls an auditor tests
The last four lines test controls, and your external auditor will sample them. Sentinel tests approval authority and conflicting preparer and approver roles, and groups related payments to catch splitting below a limit. For a bank-detail change, it prepares an independent callback to a contact the company already trusted, using known-good details, and never relies on contact details supplied with the change. Every payment hold needs Inbox approval first.
Matcher tests period cut-off on delivery, service and invoice dates, and Close Orchestrator checks that accruals and the rest of the close work are complete before sign-off. Rever's accounts payable page shows how these agents work together on payables.
A sample, or the whole population
An auditor tests payables on a sample, because pulling documents for every payment by hand costs more than the audit fee allows. Rever's agents check 100% of in-scope transactions in the connected population, and missing sources and blocked procedures stay on the record as gaps.
