Freightliner Recovery Audit:
£532,145.72 Recovered

The Challenge

Freightliner suspected significant historical issues within its Accounts Payable function, driven by multiple vendor accounts and multiple currency accounts for the same suppliers. With transaction volumes in the hundreds of thousands, a manual review wasn’t realistic – Freightliner needed a partner who could review every transaction, not a sample.

Our Approach

• 100% review of all 411,000 transactions between 2017 and 2023 – no sampling.
• A dedicated recovery audit across four discrepancy types: duplicate payments, overpayments, wrong supplier payments and VAT errors.
• Full transparency throughout – all recoveries and supporting schedules stored on Freightliner’s own servers.
• Every validation and recovery conducted directly by WMA’s audit team.

The Results

The audit identified 181 recoverable items totalling £532,145.72, broken down across three main discrepancy types:

Duplicate payments were the single largest category – split between mis-keyed invoice numbers and cases where the same supplier held multiple vendor records and billing methods. VAT errors were largely driven by proforma invoices processed as though they were final invoices. Overpayments included payments made to the wrong suppliers, unclaimed credit notes, and credit notes mis-posted as new invoices.

Why It Matters

Freightliner’s experience is common across large Accounts Payable functions: high transaction volumes, multiple vendor records and manual processes create exactly the conditions where financial leakage goes unnoticed for years. A recovery audit doesn’t just recover what’s already been lost – it surfaces the process gaps that let it happen in the first place.