At a Glance
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Who
A global company processing a high volume of invoices across a large supplier base with billions in AP spend.
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The Problem
A supplier statement reconciliation tool was used for the majority of spend, but didn’t cover all spend, couldn’t detect every type of overpayment, and didn’t have an expert global multilingual team to recover the credits.
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The Fix
apexanalytix conducted an AP recovery audit engaging suppliers directly with a structured claims process backed by a team of experienced auditors and recovery experts to help recover the funds.
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The Payoff
$1.5M recovered across 75 claims, including $850K from supplier accounts managed within the statement reconciliation tool. Plus, root cause insights to prevent future leakage.
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Overview
A global company invested in an automated supplier statement reconciliation tool to help in the identification and utilization of open credits from their suppliers. The tool was set up and running, covering a large section of their AP spend. Everything looked fine on paper.
When apexanalytix ran a recovery audit, the results were surprising. Of the $1.5 million recovered, $850K came from suppliers the software already engaged. Credits were at times not collected or posted.
Statement reconciliation software and a recovery audit are two very different things. This case study shows why.
Audit Highlights
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$1.5M
recovered across 75 claims
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$850K
recovered from suppliers the software already covered
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47%
more recovered than the statement tool found alone
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95%
supplier response rate through direct outreach
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Challenge
Many large companies use software to track supplier credits automatically. The idea is simple: set it up, connect it to your system, and let it do the work. If the software sees a problem, it flags it.
The trouble is that not all suppliers respond to automated software, so credits stay hidden. This is where experienced teams excel at finding every opportunity. Calling the suppliers, asking the right questions, digging into old credits, and following up until the money is returned.
This company’s software covered a large share of their supplier spend, but coverage depends on more than having a contact on file. The contact has to be valid, current, and the right person to resolve an open credit with. Any account missing one of those three, whether a contact was never captured, changed roles, or simply isn’t positioned to collaborate on credits, falls outside what the tool can review.
That left a substantial group of suppliers with no coverage at all. Credits were building up, and no one was working to identify and secure the money back.
Why a Hands-Off Audit Outperforms Software
A recovery audit requires three things working together: actionable data, advanced analytics, and experienced auditors who know what they are looking for. Most solutions give you one. apexanalytix brings all three, built on the largest continuously updated dataset of invoices, payments, and supplier interactions in the world. The result is a greater ROI than any software, BPO, or internal team in the market, at no upfront cost.
In this engagement, the apexanalytix audit found 47% more funds than the statement reconciliation software had. This case is a clear example of that gap in practice.
The gap starts with scope. A typical automated tool brings about 80% of spend into scope, and response gaps shrink that further, so a large share of spend never gets reviewed at all. apexanalytix covers 95% of spend and drives a 90% response rate, reviewing 50% more spend than the tool, and follows through until every credit is recovered.
That gap also shows up in the data itself. Roughly 80% of what apexanalytix recovers for clients is dependent on supplier data that does not exist in client ERPs, not because the data is wrong, but the contacts in ERPs are not the best contacts for discovering, confirming, and resolving overpayment errors.
When a statement reconciliation tool hits the edge of its configured data, it stops. When apexanalytix hits that same edge, it reaches into a global supplier database and keeps going.
The apexanalytix database of 280M+ supplier records extends what clients can see. It’s continuously built and curated as specialized recovery audit contact data, and backed by a team that tracks down a contact directly when the data alone hits a wall. That’s why apexanalytix recovers more, more quickly, than any software or service in the market.
Solution
apexanalytix ran a full review of the company’s AP activity over a multi-year period, covering both their invoices and their supplier accounts.
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Invoice Review
Analyzed 100% of their spend, hundreds of thousands of invoices tied to billions of dollars, searching for duplicate payments, overpayments, and billing errors. Most software solutions limit this kind of review to a handful of top-spend suppliers, typically under 5% of the vendor file. apexanalytix reviewed all of it.
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Supplier Statement Review
Targeted an extended list of suppliers. Engaged all suppliers directly and used advanced analytics to flag suppliers most likely to be holding unreturned or unapplied credits. This included suppliers already covered by the existing tool.
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Direct Supplier Outreach
apexanalytix reached the right contact at each supplier, not just the ones in the client’s database, but the ones in apex’s proprietary database of contacts we’ve built productive relationships with over time. Where a contact had gone stale, apex’s process quickly identified who to reach instead. That approach drove a 95% response rate, the kind of response rate that makes it possible to find leakage that software alone misses.
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Claims Follow-Through
Every finding was confirmed, tracked, and followed up on through a combination of AI and human interaction until the money was recovered. In some cases, the company already knew about certain credits but had never been able to recover them. They either didn’t know who to contact or couldn’t get the suppliers to submit the credits or return the money back. apexanalytix did.
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Results
The audit recovered $1.5M across 75 claims. $850K of that came from suppliers the software’s own coverage should have secured. apexanalytix went into those same accounts, had the conversations the software never had, and brought back money that had been sitting there uncollected.
The remainder came from suppliers where duplicate payments were unearthed or from suppliers that the statement reconciliation tool ignored entirely, a population with zero statement reconciliation coverage. Without a dedicated audit, that money had no path home.
A small handful of suppliers accounted for a disproportionate share of total findings. One credit alone, which was predicted by our advanced analytics, approached a quarter million dollars, the result of an invoice submission error that added an erroneous invoice line leading to an overpayment nobody ever caught. How did we predict it? Advanced AI that continuously learns from the world’s largest dataset of statement reconciliation and overpayment recovery data. More data, better analytics.
What Software Cannot Do
Automated tools have real value. They can reduce errors, create structure, and take work off AP teams. That matters. But they operate within boundaries, and boundaries leave gaps.
What apexanalytix does is different. The world’s most advanced AI predicts where overpayments are likely and prioritizes which suppliers to contact. Every credit is pursued. Every claim is followed through to resolution. A 95% response rate is not a feature of the software. It is the result of advanced AI, comprehensive data, and experienced people doing the work with the kind of professionalism that makes suppliers want to engage.
Some organizations look at internal teams as the most cost-effective recovery option. In practice, it is often the most expensive. Salaries and software subscriptions are a cost. But eclipsing operational costs are the direct-to-the-bottom-line cost of credits that are never recovered by these programs. A hands-on recovery audit with apexanalytix eliminates all three of those costs at once.
Software solutions capture some easy targets, and that can create the impression the problem has been solved. But gaps in technology, scope, and process mean they end up costing companies far more than they save.
Conclusion
This audit makes one thing very clear: monitoring is not recovery. Software tools run on partial supplier scope, contact data that’s often incomplete or pointed at the wrong person, and without the specialized expertise recovery work actually requires. Those gaps are why hidden and unrecovered credits accumulate even when a tool is running. Closing them takes someone who shows up, follows through, and refuses to close the file until the work is done. Receiving a statement is the first step, executing actions to secure the value within those statements is the second and most important step. A recovery audit also provides insight on the causes of recoveries which leads to process enhancement, that helps to mitigate future leakage.
The $850K from accounts the software was already watching says everything. The tool was on. The credits were there. apexanalytix went and got them, and it required none of the client’s own team’s time to find it.
If your organization has AP automation in place and considers the recovery problem solved, this engagement tells a different story. Software sets a floor. A dedicated recovery audit finds what is still sitting below it. In this case, that meant 47% more recovered funds than the software was able to find.
