If we take an invoice matching system, it will be able to match 100% of invoices under normal known circumstances. However, it will only accurately match 90% of invoices under completely unforeseen circumstances. 1 invoice out of every 100 invoices falls into this unforeseen category. That means that 0.1% of all invoices will not be accurately matched. Even though your system is running 99.9% efficient (more than it would have been designed to do), if we apply this 0.1% error rate to every other accounting system and to a turnover figure, we can see that for a turnover of £1 billion there are potential losses of £1 million.

Example: An automated matching system will accurately match many different items on an invoice with 100% accuracy. However, if an invoice number has been left of the invoice, this will be checked manually. As there are many things that need to be checked and matched on an invoice, you can forgive an operator for maybe overlooking 1 of 20 checks per invoice every 10 invoices. Thus 1 in every 10 unforeseen invoice is matched incorrectly.

Although this potential loss of profit seems large, you could quite easily argue that the costs of developing a water tight accounting system, which inevitably is not going to be able to foresee every circumstance that may arise, would simply overshadow these potential savings.

From research, however, we can see that possibly 90% of these errors are recurring ones caused by only a few recurring problems.

We believe by analysing the efficiencies and performance of various systems and analysing and determining the cause of some errors, we can provide or recommend cost effective solutions for the prevention and recovery of these losses.