The best time to stop a bad purchase is before it becomes a payment.
Procurement fraud is not always dramatic. It can look like a ghost order, a rushed supplier change, an inflated invoice, a verbal approval that nobody can prove, or a delivery that was only partly received.
For SMEs, the goal is not to create a police-state process. The goal is to keep normal buying moving while making the risky steps visible, approved and linked to proof.
Where procurement risk usually enters.
Ghost orders
Orders that cannot be tied back to a real request, department, reason or approval trail.
Inflated invoices
Invoices that are paid without quote discipline, PO evidence, delivery proof or quantity checks.
Supplier manipulation
Supplier details, banking information or contact records changed without independent verification.
Delivery fraud and disputes
Goods marked as received without photo proof, receiver details, partial-delivery tracking or source linkage.
Make the risky steps harder to skip.
- Capture staff requests before supplier spend starts.
- Use approval rules and OTP gates for sensitive actions.
- Keep supplier creation and bank-detail changes controlled.
- Attach delivery proof, photos and receiver details to the source order.
- Match invoice payment evidence against request, PO and delivery proof.
- Keep reports linked back to the records behind the number.