Supplier Statement Review

What is the principle behind supplier statement review ?

Many discrepancies can lie hidden in corporate accounts, especially within large corporations and mid-sized enterprises. However, some of these anomalies remain invisible if analyzed solely from the viewpoint of a company’s own accounting records. The only way to uncover them is by comparing those records to account statements provided by suppliers.

This is the principle behind supplier statement review: a comparative analysis of your company's accounting data against that of your suppliers, aimed at identifying favorable discrepancies. It is a proven process, different from the more general audit confirmation procedures initiated by statutory auditors. When performed by Profit Recovery specialists, supplier statement review enables companies to recover unrecorded credit notes or uncover duplicate payments resulting from accounting errors.

Respecting supplier relationships

The quality of a supplier statement review depends on several factors. One of the most critical is maintaining the strong relationships your company has built with its suppliers. To ensure this, we’ve assembled a team of dedicated statement review professionals who operate directly from our offices in Paris. Their top priority is to preserve the integrity of these relationships—an essential principle at the core of our proven methodology, refined across numerous audits.

As such, we compile a supplier list to be reviewed, based on statistical analysis, the experience of our consultants, and factors such as transaction volume and the number of outstanding credits. Your company retains full control over this list and approves it beforehand, with the capacity to make additions or removals.

Expertise and technology at the core of our Methodology

Once the supplier list is approved, we contact each supplier to request account statements. We've developed a proprietary tool that enables quick and efficient email outreach, with messages subject to your company’s approval, clearly explaining our role in the process.

Each email is always accompanied by a signed authorization letter legitimizing our involvement, offering reassurance to your supplier. Where necessary, these emails can also be sent using one of your company’s email addresses to ensure maximum transparency.

Once the statements are received, they are carefully analyzed and cross-referenced against your own accounting records to identify any overpayments not yet captured in current credit memos.

Serge Rolland, Chief Accounting Officer at VINCI Construction

I authorized Runview to contact our suppliers and request account ledger statements related to VINCI, in order to identify supplier credits we were unaware of. I was impressed by the level of participation—76%—and by how many items to our benefit were uncovered through this supplier statement review.

Isabelle Herbet, Director of Indirect Purchasing at Groupe SEB

I had initial concerns about the process. I feared it might jeopardize our supplier relationships. However, early results made it clear that Runview operates through a highly professional and transparent approach that actually strengthens those relationships. A clean, accurate ledger reflects Groupe SEB’s professionalism and reassures our suppliers.