PrintCHECK guide
How to prevent duplicate vendor payments before checks go out
Paying the same invoice twice is one of the most common accounts payable mistakes — and by check it is the slowest to recover. Most duplicates can be caught with a few simple checks before a batch is printed.
· 6 min read · By the Consus Solutions team
Why duplicates happen
- The same bill entered twice — once from the emailed PDF and once from the paper copy.
- A reminder treated as a new bill — a vendor's second notice gets keyed in as a fresh invoice.
- A payment recorded twice — a bill payment and a separate check written against the same bill.
- Small differences — invoice “1047” and “INV-1047”, or the same amount a few days apart.
Four checks that catch most of them
- Same document on two payments. Any QuickBooks bill that appears on more than one check is a strong signal.
- Same payee and amount within a short window. Two checks to one vendor for the same amount within, say, 60 days deserve a second look.
- Amount far from the norm. Compare each check with the median you usually pay that payee; a payment three times the usual is worth confirming.
- First-time payee. A new payee is not wrong, but it is where fraud and misdirected payments tend to start.
Doing it by hand
In a small office, sort the batch by payee and amount before printing and scan for repeats, then run a vendor QuickReport for anyone you have not paid before. It works, but it depends on someone having time on every run.
Automating it
PrintCHECK runs these checks on every batch automatically before it prints — AI check review — and explains each finding in a sentence, for example: “Unusual amount — $2,083.24 against a median of $665.53 across 3 previous payments — 3.1× the usual.”
The findings come from fixed rules against your own check history, so they are the same every time. AI only writes the explanation. And the review never blocks printing: you remove the check, or accept the finding with a reason.