What a corporate invoice should let you check

Any supplier can send an invoice. The question that matters to a finance team is whether the invoice can be interrogated: can you take a line, find the thing that caused it, and satisfy yourself it was legitimate.

Trip-level detail

A corporate travel invoice should let you get from the total to an individual trip. Who travelled, when, from where to where, and what it cost. If the invoice stops at a departmental subtotal, you are being asked to trust rather than to check.

Topsy invoices carry a receipt behind each trip for this reason.

Attribution that was captured at the time

Department, cost centre and project should be on the trip because they were attached when it was booked, not allocated afterwards by someone guessing. Attribution reconstructed at month end is an estimate wearing a costume.

Approvals visible against the spend

Where a trip required approval, the invoice should reflect that it was approved and by whom. This is the audit trail that makes a control real. An approval process whose outcome is not recorded against the transaction is a conversation, not a control.

Currency and totals

Invoices are in cedis. That sounds trivial until you have reconciled a statement that was not, and had to argue about which rate applied on which day.

Refunds and cancellations

Cancelled trips and refunds should be visible rather than netted silently into a smaller total. A total that quietly absorbs a refund is a total you cannot tie to your own records.

What to do with the first one

Take the first invoice and reconcile it fully, not by sampling. It is the cheapest opportunity you will have to find out whether your attribution is set up correctly, whether limits are where you thought, and whether anybody is booking outside the account.

Almost every organisation adjusts something after that exercise. Doing it in month one rather than month six is the difference between a small correction and a year of muddled reporting.