Three years of supplier payments in a Swedish municipality: high quality and just over 800 discrepancies

We have analysed all supplier payments in a Swedish municipality for the invoice years 2023 to 2025. Quality was high: more than 99.8% of the transactions and 99.9% of the purchased value were without remark. The just over 800 discrepancies we found concerned almost entirely VAT compensation, mainly in premises rents and in activities purchased from private providers.

The assignment

The assignment was an analysis of the municipality’s retrospective supplier payments. The aim was to see whether systems, routines and reporting meet the activity’s requirements. We included all transactions with an invoice date from January 2023 up to and including December 2025, a very large number of transactions in total.

The analysis covered several areas: 18% flat-rate compensation for VAT on premises rents, 5% and 18% compensation, 6% compensation for purchased activities, municipal VAT, other VAT, duplicate and erroneous payments, overpayments, fraudulent invoices, contracts, grants, conflicts of interest, unsettled items, interest, fees and currency, and tax.

In addition to the discrepancies we looked at the supplier register, how the purchase value is distributed across suppliers, the size of invoices and payment times.

How we worked

We went through every transaction in the period and tested it against the areas of analysis. Each discrepancy was registered with category, invoice date, supplier and amount. This means the result can be broken down by year, by month, by category and by supplier.

We compared the supplier register with the transactions to see which supplier numbers are actually used. The register was also compared with a warning list of known disreputable companies, on bank giro number, street address, postal address and corporate identity number.

The result was delivered as an interactive report in which the municipality can filter on period and category and drill down to individual invoices.

What we found

We found just over 800 discrepancies with a combined value of a few million SEK. The breakdown is as follows:

• 18% flat rate for premises rents accounted for just under 60% of the discrepancies and just over 60% of the amount. The discrepancies were concentrated. A single supplier accounted for about half of the discrepancies and for over 90% of the amount in the category.
• 6% compensation for purchased activities accounted for about 40% of the discrepancies and about 35% of the amount. Here the picture was the opposite. The discrepancies were spread across many providers within different types of purchased activities. No single provider accounted for more than about one eighth of the amount.
• Municipal VAT produced 14 discrepancies, just under 2% of the amount. They concerned scattered purchases of services and goods, several of them of a few thousand SEK.
• Duplicate or erroneous payments produced a single discrepancy, of around SEK 30,000.

In the other areas of analysis, including fraudulent invoices, overpayments, contracts, grants and conflicts of interest, the report shows no discrepancies.

By year, almost 60% of the amount was in 2024. 2023 accounted for about 15% and 2025 for just under 30%.

The supplier register showed a different pattern. Around 70% of the supplier numbers in the register were not used during the period. Of the suppliers that were used, just over 40% were one-off suppliers, just under 30% were used two to five times and just under 30% were used often. Just under 50 supplier numbers in the transactions could not be matched to the register. Three suppliers in the register matched the warning list on corporate identity number. No payments to them were made during the period.

Purchasing was concentrated. Fewer than 20 suppliers accounted for half of the invoice value, and around 120 suppliers for four fifths.

Over 80% of the invoices were for less than SEK 4,000. Just over 1% were for SEK 100,000 or more. Just under 1% were credit invoices and around 9% had no VAT.

Payment times were even. About two thirds of the transactions were paid 21 to 30 days after the invoice date, and almost all within 40 days. Around 2,500 transactions had a longer payment time than that, and about ten were paid more than half a year after the invoice date.

What the municipality took away

The municipality received a list of every discrepancy with supplier, date and amount. That is the basis for taking each item further.

The result also points to where the controls can be tightened. The premises rents concern a small number of suppliers, so a review of the routine for just those contracts covers most of the amount. The compensation for purchased activities is spread across many providers and instead requires a working routine for each new provider of purchased activities.

The supplier register can be cleaned up. A large share of inactive numbers, unmatched supplier numbers and hits against the warning list are all points where the risk of error and fraud can be reduced.

The report shows that the municipality’s handling of supplier payments works in all essentials, and where the remaining tenth of a per cent lies.

Which actions the municipality chose to carry out is not stated in the project report.

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