Duplicate Payment Rate
Percentage of payments made in error as duplicates of already-paid invoices
What is Duplicate Payment Rate?
Duplicate payment rate is the percentage of payments that were made more than once by mistake. It shows how well accounts payable controls prevent paying the same invoice twice.
Duplicate payments waste cash and, if not recovered, go straight to the loss line, so keeping the rate close to zero is a basic sign of good control.
How this KPI is measured
- Function
- Finance
- Sub-function
- Accounts Payable
- Industry
- All Industries
- Type
- Lagging
- Impact
- Financial control
- Unit
- %
- Measurement frequency
- Monthly / Quarterly
- Formula
- (Duplicate payments identified / Total payments made) × 100
How to calculate it
Divide duplicate payments identified by total payments made, and multiply by 100.
For example, if 30 duplicates were identified among 20,000 payments, the rate is 0.15%.
Measure by count and by value, and include those found after the payment run, since detection often happens later through review or supplier statements.
Where it is used
Protecting cash
Reduce money paid out in error.
Testing control strength
Check that duplicate checks work.
Supporting audits
Show payment controls.
How to improve it
Tips and common mistakes
- Measure value as well as count.
- Duplicates from manual re-keying are common.
- Reconcile supplier statements regularly.
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