A new financial product helps small businesses catch invoice fraud in real time. Because it uses AI to catch any issues between what’s invoiced for and what was agreed to in contracts. So the software instantly reads and correlates each.
This new AppZen Invoices and Contracts Software stands to help American small businesses. Because the software could help small businesses avoid losing 5% of their annual gross revenues to fraud. Meanwhile, last year small businesses suffered a median loss of $164,000 dollars.
Invoicing Fraud
Small Business Trends got in touch with Jamie Barnett, Chief Marketing Office for AppZen. And we learned more about the product. But we also learned about the challenges small businesses face when it comes to invoicing fraud.
Barnett started by pointing out two examples. In on instance, AI powered software caught a $110,000 invoice that had already been paid. And in another detected a duplicate invoice for $135,000.
The Issue
Part of the issue for small businesses involves the volume of documents related to contracts and invoices. Because humans can only catch some of the fraud, errors and waste.
“Accountants don’t often have time to review transactions before paying. They rely on requesters for approval of invoices,” Barnett writes in an email. “When they can review spending, they can only usually look at a fraction of the transactions.
We have discovered that problems go way beyond things like purchase order matching. Our AI technology is helping to identify issues that amount to significant costs that weren’t able to be identified on their own.”
AppZen Audit Software Bridges the Gap
The AppZen Invoices and Contracts Software bridges the gap. Since it audits 100% of the contracts and invoices. And it cross references all the important information to match up invoices with what was negotiated in contracts.
The AI powered solution allows small businesses the flexibility of approving low risk invoices. And it gives human auditors working for small businesses the time to properly investigate the smaller number of high risk spends on the books.
Supplier Agreements
“AppZen instantly reads supplier agreements and invoices submitted to accounts payable and other payable transactions,” Barnett writes. “All the key pieces of information around pricing terms and service requirements are extracted”
AI audits address several problem areas including travel and meal violations. The new software also picks up on excessive policy spends and duplicate claims.
Not only can it find fraud from suppliers and vendors, it also picks off most discrepancies in expense reports.
Human Auditors
Basically, the artificial intelligence platform does the same work as a large team of human auditors. It’s a great way for small businesses to get that kind of accuracy without hiring a big team.
Barnett stresses how this works to better an SMB’s bottom line.
“With the addition of the Invoice Audit and Contract Audit to our existing suite of solutions (Expense Audit and Audit Insights), AppZen is creating an innovative AI platform for the modern finance team. Auditors now can focus on the issues that matter most to the performance and profitability of a company.”
Regulatory Issues
She also highlights how the AI powered solution can help the small business owner who continually faces the challenges of adhering to regulatory issues and the need to streamlines processes. The product even catches tiered pricing discrepancies and suspicious addresses by using worldwide sources.
Barnett explains:
“Real-time auditing incorporates intelligence from business systems and global online sources including both structured and unstructured data as well as the ability to be compliant with contracts, spend policy and relevant regulations.”
Image: AppZen