What can the Right Recovery Auditor do for Your Company?
Most purchasing errors you make simply fix themselves within 90 to 120 days due to your everyday process’s usual checks and balances. However, after this initial period, you have less than a 2% chance that you’ll identify them yourself. That’s why a recovery auditor working on this task is an invaluable helping hand for your AP department. Yet, there’s a catch. You need to make sure that you’ve picked the right recovery auditor for your company. Not all firms have the same capabilities, and not all firms can deliver the same results.
6 Tips to Choosing a Recovery Auditor
1) The right recovery auditor deploys a blend of human experience and technology to get the job done.
Most of the time, the firm will have its own proprietary solutions. They will need to explain and demonstrate its capabilities for you to make sure their capabilities fit your needs. You will need to make sure that the provider uses the right kind of technology and automated systems, which will allow them to process the volumes that your engagement will require.
2) Pick the deep diver, who will make sure that your process reaches the most comprehensive level of compliance.
This would mean that the provider can review all of your spending transactions across all of your suppliers. Old-school traditional, manual recovery auditors rely on sampling some large transactions from only the most prominent suppliers. Your goal should be to have the recovery auditor conduct a comprehensive review to maximize your return
3) Ongoing process controls – Keep the process flowing.
The best recovery auditor has to ensure that the entire review process is uninterrupted and supported with up-to-date data from start to finish. This is sometimes easier said than done, especially if the auditor is not using state-of-the-art technology to manage documents and transactions.
4) Full transparency of the process and results.
Gone are the days when you need to wait until the end of an engagement to receive root-cause analysis and reporting access. With the current advancements in technology, the provider should give you a real-time view of both your results and the various steps in their processes.
5) Require minimal client support
A practical and successful recovery auditing process should not be intrusive for your company’s daily operations. The audit team should be able to work remotely and independent of your staff. The auditors should keep you informed but not to the point where they are a burden on your team.
6) Identify processing deficiencies along with recoveries
While it is common for recovering dollars to be the primary goal of a recovery audit, you should also insist that the recovery auditor delivers valuable root cause analysis and process improvement suggestions
Benefits Derived from Recovery Auditing
Modern comprehensive recovery audit techniques strongly differentiate themselves from the more manual reviews of the past. This is due to technology and its ability to scale the scope of the engagement concerning communication and workflow. Thanks to this significant difference, you can expect the following benefits while maximizing your review.
- More transactions you cover and vendors your reach – more dollars you recover. It’s really as simple as that.
- The initial recovery dollars should start appearing almost immediately. In a comprehensive review using technology, you should expect to see initial results within 30 days.
- Ongoing recoveries are the logical and expected results of comprehensive recovery audit Technology will allow you to look at the service as a process rather than a project.
- Continuous supplier communication will uncover new opportunities for you to collect valid, current information to update your supplier master file.
- Your audit firm should be able to leverage its communication systems to help you process future potential issues with your suppliers.
Choosing the right recovery auditor can undoubtedly do a lot of positive things for your company. Yet, you need to follow these 6 key points to make sure you’ve found the right one. In addition, this list of benefits can be used as a checklist of the recovery auditor’s efficiency. At the end of the long auditing day, it will all come down to the number of recovered dollars for your company.
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