Duplicate Payments

Duplicate Payments

• Same-Same-Same

  Detecting payments where one or more values are identical, such as same vendor, same amount, same date, is straightforward. In the Duplicates command dialog, select those fields from the "Field(s) to test for Duplicates" list.

  You can select additional fields in the "List fields" list to send to the output, such as product number, that may enhance your follow-up analysis. And, finally, the output can be directed to a file in the "Output options" section by selecting "DATA" and naming the output file.

  

   

• Same-Same-Different

  If you're trying to detect same vendor, same amount, different invoice, selecting the "Different" parameter will identify those transactions.

  

  

   

• Same-Same-Near

  The "Near" parameter allows greater precision and focus. For example, you could search for same vendor, same month, within $10 for amounts that are very close in value. As well, you could identify same vendor, same product, same amount, date within 14 days to exclude recurring payments.

  The field being tested for the "Near" quality must be the final field selected in the "Fields to test for Duplicates" list. 

  Note that the results for Near and Similar places the matching records side-by-side. This facilitates more granular testing, such as calculating the actual number of days between the two transaction dates.
  

  

   

• Same-Same-Similar

  It frequently happens that vendors may re-issue the same invoice with a slightly different number, such as re-issuing invoice number "102" as "102a". Or input errors may replace one character so that it is entered as "I02".

  The "Similar" parameter allows you to test for same vendor, same amount, invoice numbers within 1 character of each other.

  To compare the invoice numbers, all blanks, leading zeros and punctuation are removed, data is made upper case and similar looking characters (e.g. 1 and I, or 0 and O) are matched.
  
  Note how similar the two invoice numbers are for rows 4-6 with substitutions of "I" for "1".

  

  

   

• Suppress Duplicates Parameter

  This checkbox will exclude exact matches from the Near and Similar analytics. Exact duplicates are higher-risk, and the presumption is that those would have been already identified. This allows the analyst to focus on a different population without the risk of double-counting.