Following a recent audit on the Payments Office looking at the potential risk in making duplicate payments, we would like to highlight the importance when registering an invoice to enter the invoice number exactly as it appears including any hyphens, letters or spaces. This would also be applicable for credit notes.
The audit found that there is room for error if the invoice/credit note number is not entered correctly and although thankfully over the period that was audited there were only a few duplicate payments made, they all occurred because of the invoice numbers.
One other factor in this is if you have individuals who are submitting invoices, most often they do not quote an invoice number or they use the same one repeatedly. It is then down to the staff member processing the invoice to interpret what reference should be quoted. If it could be stressed to the individual the importance of including an invoice number this would be greatly appreciated.
If you need any help or have any questions regarding this, please contact Emma Rowland or any other member of staff in the Payments Office.