Two checks on the money: before it leaves, and after it has.

Most controls over payments are approvals. An approval says someone signed. It does not say whether the rate matched the contract, whether the goods arrived, or whether the same invoice was paid twice. Transaction assurance checks the payment itself, before and after.

• A capex programme or a large contractor base where rates and measurements drive the bill.
• Duplicate or split payments found once, and nobody sure there are no more.
• Advances that never close, vendors created last week, payments just under approval limits.
• A promoter who signs the cheque but no longer sees the paperwork behind it.

Money that has left is expensive to recover and embarrassing to explain. Money stopped before release costs nothing. Without a check on the transaction, the control is only as good as the person who approved it.

1. Pre-auditPayments above an agreed threshold reviewed before release: contract or order, receipt or measurement, rate, taxes and deductions, approval trail. A payment that does not hold up is put on hold with a written reason.
2. Transaction auditCompleted payments tested on the full population: duplicates, rate and quantity deviations, split payments, payments to related or newly created vendors, advances that never closed. Recoverable amounts go on a list with the document that supports each one.
3. FeedbackPatterns found after payment tighten the checks before the next one. Tests that keep finding issues move into Continuous Control Monitoring.

• Hold register: payments stopped, reason, resolution.
• Recoveries list, each item evidenced.
• Cycle exceptions note, two pages.
• Tightened pre-release checklist for the payments team.