Good AP controls are designed to prevent errors. A recovery audit looks backward across the population to identify value that escaped those controls and is still recoverable.
Controls are preventive
Approval workflows, vendor-master discipline, duplicate invoice checks and payment controls reduce the chance of a duplicate being created.
Recovery is retrospective
A recovery audit compares historical vendor, invoice and payment patterns to identify economic obligations that may have been paid more than once or credits that remain unused.
The first lookback and steady state are different
An initial historical review can find older issues created under prior staffing, system or process conditions. Ongoing monitoring should naturally produce lower but recurring opportunity as controls improve.
See hotel AP recovery.