Tax season doesn’t create fraud risk — it exposes it. Tax season is a perfect storm for accounts payable (AP) fraud. Not necessarily because invoice volume explodes overnight, but because deadlines compress, sensitive vendor/tax data gets handled more often, and teams feel pressure to “just get it done.” That’s exactly when fraud blends in.
In a CPE-accredited session hosted by Encoursa’s Director of Education & Partnerships Liz Briggson, CPA, the message was clear: fraud prevention is most effective when it’s embedded into the workflow — not layered on after the fact.
And the risk is real. The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) reported that 79% of organizations experienced attempted or actual payments fraud activity in 2024, and 63% cited business email compromise (BEC) as the top avenue for fraud attempts.
Below is a practical, AP-team-friendly breakdown of the most important red flags to watch and the controls that help you catch issues earlier, especially during peak periods like tax season.
Missed the live session? Watch the on-demand replay here.
4 AP fraud red flags that spike during tax season
1. Vendor impersonation and bank-detail changes
If your process relies heavily on email, vendor-change requests can look “normal” even when they’re not.
- A sudden spike in vendor master updates (especially banking details)
- Urgency language (“we need this updated today for the audit”)
- Requests that bypass your usual contact path (new email, new signature, new tone)
A proven mitigation is a call-back procedure: confirm bank changes using a trusted phone number on file (not the one in the email).
2. Duplicate invoice patterns (intentional or “accidental”)
Duplicate invoices aren’t always fraud. But fraudsters specifically target environments where duplicate detection is inconsistent — especially during high-volume periods. When teams rush, duplicate checks become inconsistent.
- Repeat submissions from the same vendor
- Invoice numbers that are sequential or oddly similar
- Amounts that repeatedly land just under approval thresholds (a common tactic)
3. Approval overrides and rushed approvals
Two extremes create risk:
- Long approval lags that cause last-minute batch approvals
- Process overrides to “clear the queue”
Both reduce scrutiny right when scrutiny matters most.
4. Rising exception rates
Exceptions are rarely isolated problems. During tax season, rising exceptions often mean your control environment is under strain — and strained controls are easier to exploit.
Track exception volume and exception types (missing PO, mismatched vendor info, missing tax IDs, unusual GL coding). This trendline is often an early warning signal before losses happen.
The prevention playbook: layer controls and monitor the right KPIs
Build layered controls (not one “big” control)
Strong fraud prevention is usually a set of smaller, consistent checks:
- Vendor master hygiene
- Documented SOPs for vendor onboarding and vendor changes
- Segregation of duties for bank updates
- Verification steps that can’t be “skipped” under pressure
- Invoice validation
- Automated capture and validation to reduce manual re-keying errors
- Duplicate detection and exception flagging so issues surface early
- Risk-based approvals
- Approval paths that change by dollar threshold, entity, vendor risk, or exception type
- Required supporting documentation before approval can move forward
Treat KPIs like fraud “smoke alarms”
The most useful fraud KPIs are simple and operational:
- Vendor-change volume (especially banking changes)
- Duplicate invoice rate
- Approval lag (average and outliers)
- Exception rate trends
These don’t replace investigations, but they help you decide where to look first.
Remove email as the system of record for financial approvals.
Email was never designed to be a financial control system. Moving approvals, documents, and vendor interactions into a controlled workflow improves verification, visibility, and traceability, especially important during audits.
Tax season is when your newest team members (and your busiest approvers) are most likely to miss subtle signals. Short refresher training and periodic phishing simulations can significantly reduce risk because BEC and vendor impersonation are still among the most common attack paths.
Where Quadient fits: make fraud prevention part of the workflow
When fraud controls live in spreadsheets and inboxes, they break under pressure. Quadient AP moves vendor onboarding, banking changes, invoice capture, and approvals into a controlled system of record — reducing reliance on email and enforcing policy automatically.
With Quadient AP automation, finance teams shift from reactive fraud detection to embedded control:
- Route invoices through rules-based approvals to prevent rushed or unauthorized processing
- Reduce duplicate-payment risk with structured workflows and validation (especially when paired with vendor data cleanup)
- Maintain digital audit trails that make it easier to prove who approved what and why
- Connect AP workflows with ERPs to reduce re-keying, inconsistencies, and “side-channel” approvals (a common fraud weak point)
Closing thought (and your next step)
Tax season fraud doesn’t usually show up as something dramatic. It shows up as “one urgent email,” “one exception you’ll fix later,” or “one bank change that seems routine.” The teams that avoid losses aren’t the ones who work harder — they’re the ones whose workflows don’t break under pressure.
If you’re tightening AP controls ahead of close or want to reduce fraud risk without adding headcount book a personalized demo to see how Quadient can help streamline approvals, flag risk early, and keep every step audit-ready.