The Federal Trade Commission warns that fake invoices can arrive by mail or email, sometimes with overdue language or familiar company names. Its guidance calls for clear purchase and invoice approval procedures. The following workflow is an AMS editorial approach to putting that advice into practice.
Start with the person who authorized the purchase
Ask the requester to identify the purchase order, signed proposal or other approval record. Then establish who can confirm delivery. In a small shop these may be the same person, but the two questions remain distinct: was the purchase authorized, and did the promised work arrive?
A useful review note can be short: service period, approval reference, delivery evidence, reviewer and unresolved question. Keep it with the invoice in the normal accounting system. Do not create a separate spreadsheet full of bank account numbers just to prove that a review happened.
Treat a changed payment destination as a separate decision
Even when the work is familiar, changed instructions deserve their own check. Use an established vendor contact from existing records, rather than relying on the telephone number in the new message. Document who confirmed the change and when. If the responsible employee is away, the invoice can remain on hold for a named reviewer instead of becoming an exception that nobody owns.
For example, an invoice for a completed repair and a request to send the payment to a different account are two separate pieces of information. Proof that the repair occurred does not, by itself, verify the new destination. This is an illustrative workflow, not a report of a particular merchant incident.
Close the exception without losing the evidence
Record whether the request was approved, rejected or returned for clarification. Give a held invoice a review date and an owner so legitimate vendors are not left waiting indefinitely. If the request appears fraudulent, preserve the message and consult the business’s established incident-response contacts; the FTC also accepts reports at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
At the next payment run, review the held items before adding new ones. The goal is a decision trail that another authorized person can follow, not a longer checklist that staff learn to ignore.
