Additional cost savings in receipt error checking

The expense claiming process attracts a variety of inaccuracies, both intentional and non. The problems with expenses for the finance team and administrators are the processing times associated with identifying and fixing these errors, which is frustrating for both admins and claimants.

Expense management software significantly reduces errors associated with claim limits, authorisation workflow, employees stockpiling expenses and overinflated mileage claims which reduces processing times.

However, there is still the matter of authenticity. Your claimant may be keeping to every rule and limit you company has, and following the process to the letter, but do their claims match the receipt or proof of payment being provided?

Manually checking the accuracy of every claim is time consuming. One client who switched from a manual checking process reported manual processing times of anywhere up to 4 hours per claim!

Receipt validation

Receipt Validation is a service offered by Civica, which takes your expense approval process to the next level.

After your managers have approved claims, but before sending to the finance team, our Receipt Validation team review the receipts attached to each claim. They will run numerous checks including values, dates, identifying duplicate claims and ensure the VAT treatment on each claim is correct.

Are there really hidden cost savings in unchecked receipts?

Absolutely, yes!

Incorrect expense claims not only leave room for fraudulent activity which brings additional costs to the business but can also mean reclaimable VAT is being missed on valid receipts, and where it is established that the VAT reclaim is not correct, this can cause grief in the event of a HMRC VAT audit.

A single coffee receipt may not seem worth the effort of checking, but perhaps some of these statistics may change the perspective?

Our Receipt Validation team check on average 1892 claims each month per company.

One single claimant submitted over 300 claims in a 3-month period.

The total VAT missed on submitted expense claims in one organisation over a 3-month period was £4,546.

Improving claim accuracy

A strict receipt checking process also encourages accuracy in submitted expense claims. Employees do not want their reimbursement to be delayed, so take extra care their claim is accurate in the first place.

A cross section of employees in one company who had an average combined success rate (where claims pass receipt validation checks) of 27%, improved to 92% in 1 month following the introduction of our Receipt validation service.

Long standing customers expect an average claims success rate of 98%, with individual success rates rarely dropping.

Find out more about the checks we run as part of our Receipt validation service.