Jackson, a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE).

The 2014 International Fraud Examiners Manual provides examples of data analysis for accounts payable:

“Examples of data analysis queries that can be performed to help detect fraud through examination of accounts payable include:

• Audit paid invoices for manual comparison with actual invoices.

• Summarise large invoices by amount, vendor, etc.

• Identify debits to expense accounts outside of set default accounts.

• Reconcile cheque registers to disbursements by vendor invoice.”

While other functions apply to payroll or asset management, the most effective function for accounts payable fraud detection is to summarize large invoices by amount and vendor.