Covivio : using accounts payable audits as a driver of continuous improvement
The property investment company Covivio makes use of ABBD’s skills since 2012 to identify any residual irregularities lingering within its accounting records and recover amounts wrongly paid. “I think ABBD has remarkable and comprehensive expertise in double payments“, points out Hubert Lasseron, Internal Auditor at Covivio. “We have been working with ABBD for nine years, and they have been producing results for nine years“, he observes.
The results obtained induced Covivio to repeat the audits regularly, for both supplier over-payments and for overlooked input VAT, in France, Italy and Germany. “We have analysed the errors, and we are improving year-on-year, as are our applications, but we are not able to reach ABBD’s level of expertise or performance. Moreover, people change, as do the processes and the property assets in question, so for all these reasons, double payments continue to occur,” Hubert Lasseron believes. He also highlights the consultants’ interpersonal skills, which he sees as very important for a successful audit process. .
“When you log and process 650,000 to 700,000 accounting documents every year, it defies belief to claim they are 100% accurate” 
“It is quite normal to conduct this kind of audit fairly regularly, particularly if departments are frequently reorganised or staff turnover is high. We also think the procedure should be repeated at Group level to secure the processes, and because of the financial benefits.”
“It was a positive exercise for us. Although the amounts recovered are not that substantial, they nonetheless represent revenue that would have been lost had we not conducted the audit”