Financial leakage report: The $53bn opportunity for AP teams

Anna Meehan

Feb 2026

Key takeaways of the report

$53bn lost annually: Businesses lose billions each year to financial leakage through duplicate payments, invoice errors, missed credits and fraud.
The hidden 0.35%: Our analysis of 481 million invoices reveals that 0.35% of spend is lost to preventable errors.
Traditional controls fall short: ERPs, recovery audits and manual reconciliation can't prevent these losses at scale.
AP as profit protectors: With automation, AP teams can shift from reactive recovery to proactive prevention and deliver real value to the business.

Why is financial leakage important now?

Duplicates, invoice errors, missed credit notes and fraud quietly drain billions from Accounts Payable every year. We analysed 481 million invoices, and here’s what we found: financial leakage is more pervasive than most teams think, and standard controls aren't catching it.

What’s the impact of financial leakage in AP?

Companies lose around 0.35% of annual spend to preventable leakage. This adds up to $53bn every year across the market.

Leakage is rarely “just lost cash”. It drags operations. It creates friction with suppliers. And it contributes to a lack of confidence at month-end.

Inside the report: Practical examples, root causes and a breakdown by key industries such as manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, retail and more.

Why financial leakage is hard to catch

Most teams aren’t missing leakage because of a lack of effort. They miss it because their tools and processes weren’t designed for the volume and complexity of modern Accounts Payable.

Near-duplicates slip through

Exact-match checks miss small variations (transposed digits, formatting changes, invoices received through multiple channels).

Missed credit notes are a silent drain

If your team only reconciles a small percentage of supplier statements because of manual processes, credits get left off the ledger and aren’t used.

AP recovery audits only cover part of your spend

These are typically focused on your highest-spend suppliers or transactions (often around the top 20%), leaving the rest unchecked. Not to mention, they take 15-20% commission on the errors they do find.

Financial leakage doesn’t just drain cash. It creates constant operational friction: more exceptions to investigate, more supplier disputes to resolve and less confidence in the numbers at month-end.

How does financial leakage affect the entire AP operation?

Get the full report with benchmarks, root causes and practical examples

Download the report to see the true scale of financial leakage in AP. You’ll understand why standard controls are falling short and see what it’s costing your team in time, confidence and credibility.

You’ll get the industry benchmarks and practical guidance you need to help you plug the leaks, plus a view on what it takes to shift from reactive recovery to proactive prevention.