Service 09 - Advisory & Finance Operations
Payment Management.
Controlled, auditable vendor payments with dual approvals and bank reconciliations - outsourced, co-delivered, or advisory as your governance requires. Built to reduce fraud, error, and month-end pain.
What we do
Vendor payments,
run with audit-grade controls.
- Invoice capture & approval routing Digitised invoice intake, three-way matching to PO and GRN, and approval routing aligned with your delegation of authority matrix.
- Payment run preparation Weekly or bi-weekly payment runs with supplier-ageing discipline, cash planning inputs, and exception reports for anything unusual.
- Dual-control execution Segregation of duties built in - preparer, reviewer, approver, and bank-release all separate, with immutable audit trail on every transaction.
- Bank reconciliation Daily or weekly reconciliation of every bank account, with systematic exception investigation and root-cause resolution.
- Vendor master maintenance Disciplined vendor master file - KYC verification, banking details validation, ZATCA VAT number checks, duplicate prevention.
- Controls assessment Targeted review of your current payment process, identifying control gaps and fraud exposure - with recommendations ranked by risk.
Why it matters
Payment fraud is a quiet epidemic.
Payment fraud is one of the most commonly reported financial crimes against mid-sized Saudi businesses. Invoice diversion, vendor bank-detail changes, duplicate payments, and CEO-fraud (business email compromise) cost companies across the Kingdom meaningful money every year - and the loss is almost always traceable to thin controls rather than sophisticated attacks. Two separate people signing off would have caught it. One person doing three roles rarely does.
Strong payment controls are not about bureaucracy - they are about converting invisible risk into visible friction. Three-way matching catches over-billing. Dual release catches collusion and mistake. Vendor master discipline catches fake vendors and rerouted payments. Done well, controls are barely noticed by the business but make fraud genuinely hard. That is what a professional payment operation looks like.
Our approach
Four phases.
Control-led, not transaction-led.
Assess
Walkthrough of your current payment process, delegation matrix, and vendor master. The output is a short risk memo identifying the top three control gaps.
Design
Process redesign with segregation of duties, approval workflow, and exception escalation - documented in a standard operating procedure your team signs off.
Run
Payment runs executed to the designed controls - weekly, bi-weekly, or as your business requires - with immutable audit trails on every transaction.
Review
Monthly control effectiveness review - exceptions, ageing, vendor changes, bank reconciliation status - with continuous improvement built into the service.
Deliverables
What you receive.
Standard operating procedure
Signed-off SOP documenting every step of the payment process, who does what, and the control points along the way.
Weekly payment run
Scheduled payment runs with supporting payment proposal, approval pack, and exception report for any off-normal items.
Bank reconciliations
Reconciliations for every bank account with signed-off exception log - the document your auditor asks for on day one.
Vendor master file
Clean, validated vendor master with KYC, VAT number, bank details verified - reviewed quarterly for hygiene.
Monthly controls dashboard
One-page dashboard showing exceptions, ageing, control incidents, and trends - for your CFO and audit committee.
Audit-ready records
Every payment documented with approvals, supporting invoice, and bank evidence - organised for instant external audit review.
Who this is for
Four profiles we serve best.
Companies with thin finance teams
Businesses where one person currently handles the full payment cycle - a classic segregation-of-duties risk.
Post-fraud recovery
Organisations that have suffered an incident and need to rebuild controls rigorously before resuming normal operations.
High-transaction-volume SMEs
Businesses processing hundreds of vendor payments monthly where manual controls have become impractical.
Governance-driven groups
Family offices or PE-backed groups demanding institutional-grade payment discipline across portfolio companies.
Regulatory context
The frameworks in the background.
SAMA payment systems rules
Bank transfer rules, SARIE interbank payment system requirements, and timing of settlement - the operational layer our payment process works with.
ZATCA invoice & WHT
Payment records aligned with ZATCA VAT documentation requirements and WHT obligations on cross-border payments - built into the payment approval workflow.
AML / KYC
Vendor KYC aligned with Saudi anti-money-laundering rules - verification steps that reduce exposure to sanctions, fraud, and facilitation offences.
Companies Law & governance
Delegation of authority and board-approved spending limits - translated into a documented approval matrix that the payment process honours consistently.
Related insights
From our desks.
Partner notes on payment controls, Saudi payment-fraud trends, and segregation-of-duties design in mid-sized finance teams.
Insights coming soon - a library of technical notes on Saudi payment operations is in preparation.
Worried about payment controls?
Tell us how many vendors and payments you process monthly, and any recent concerns. A senior partner will respond within one working day with a short diagnostic approach.
Request a consultation