"We don't make errors like this in our organisation... why should we carry out an audit?"
All large organisations would benefit from our audit programme. Even if 99.9% of relevant transactions are correctly processed (and this is often not the case) significant sums can be recovered.
Caatalyst have carried out dozens of audits for some of the best-known and well-run organisations in the UK. Recovery figures can vary significantly between businesses but in every case we have made substantial recoveries on behalf of our Clients (see Client Response).
High technology finance systems are a double-edged sword: whilst they can provide additional safeguards against making errors such as inputting the same supplier invoice twice (to the same supplier account only), they can automate erroneous procedures and cost your company a small fortune (e.g. wrong VAT code set up for a particular supplier). Also, some of our recoveries fall outside the scope of your financial software, e.g., a large supplier credit never received or processed by finance (see Supplier Statement Review).
The Caatalyst audit programme is very easy to kick-off. On average we estimate that less than 10 hours of Client management time is needed for us to begin work. Given that we are paid solely on results, the downside to carrying out an audit is very minimal.
In addition to the financial recoveries we make, we provide a comprehensive Best Practices Recommendations report and detailed analysis of your accounts payable transactions (see Our Services).
Remember our service is risk-free: we only charge on a contingency basis for confirmed recoveries, if we find nothing you pay us nothing.
"Won't the audit cost our company time and resources?"
Caatalyst work 80% offsite. When we are onsite we need some assistance to show us how documents are filed and payments are processed. After that we are responsible for pulling all the documents that we might need.
See Painless Audit Kick-Off for the simple checklist of what we would need from your company and how long it would take you.
"Can't we carry out such a review for ourselves?"
Most of our Clients carry out internal processes themselves to find items such profit recoveries.
However with the time and resource pressures experienced by most large finance teams these internal reviews would generally uncover around 25% of the figure that Caatalyst would expect to find.
To put it simply, Caatalyst are an impartial fresh pair of eyes, utilising specialist software, advanced audit methodologies and a very experienced audit team to ensure that all potential recoveries are rerouted from the supplier's bank account to yours.
"Is this review going to upset my staff?"
In a nutshell the answer is no. We work extremely hard to foster great working relationships with your team. Our aim is for a cooperative solution, this can be backed-up by our current Clients.
See The Best Service Levels and Client Response for more detail.
"What about the items we are already aware of?"
Caatalyst will generally only look at items that are more than 4 months old and not corrected on your finance system. Also if you wish to exclude certain suppliers from the review we can agree this before we begin work. You will always have the option not to progress a claim if you think it inappropriate for commercial reasons.
"How much will you recover and how long does the process take?"
Use our Recoveries Calculator to see how much we can save your organisation.
The duration of the audit will obviously vary with the size of the Client and the number of transactions under review. For a £1bn turnover company carrying out a full audit the likely duration of the audit would be between 4 and 5 months from data acquisition.
The Highest Recoveries The Best Service Levels Case Study The Cost of Delay Painless Audit Kick-Off Prevent Errors at Source
