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QuickBooks books-integrity glossary
The QuickBooks money-leak glossary
Plain-English definitions of the things that quietly drain a QuickBooks file — and how a free, read-only AI agent surfaces each one for your review.
Ghost vendor
A ghost vendor is a vendor record in QuickBooks that doesn't correspond to a real, verifiable supplier — it may be fabricated to route payments, or simply a stale or never-real record that bills still flow through.
How we surface it →Cross-object duplicate
A cross-object duplicate is one real payment recorded twice in QuickBooks as two different record types — most often a hand-entered bill and the same payment re-added from the bank feed as an expense.
How we surface it →Split payment
A split payment is a single bill broken into several smaller bills so each piece falls under an approval limit that the full amount would have triggered.
How we surface it →Unit-price creep
Unit-price creep is a supplier raising the per-unit price over time in a way that never shows on the books because the bill totals keep changing with quantity.
How we surface it →Books Integrity Score
The Books Integrity Score is a single 0-to-100 number that summarizes the health of a QuickBooks Online file, calculated the same way every time.
How we surface it →Duplicate payment
A duplicate payment is the same bill paid more than once in QuickBooks — including near-duplicates where the vendor, amount or date differ slightly enough that the built-in exact-match check misses them.
How we surface it →Unused vendor credit
An unused vendor credit is money a supplier already credited back to you that sits unapplied on the account instead of reducing what you owe or being refunded.
How we surface it →First-digit screen
A first-digit screen is a forensic check that compares the leading digits of your spend amounts against the natural pattern real spending follows, to surface amounts that don't occur naturally.
How we surface it →Recurring Charge Audit
A systematic review of ongoing subscription and retainer expenses in QuickBooks that identifies forgotten subscriptions, silent price increases, and services no longer in use.
How we surface it →Line Extension Error
A math error on a vendor invoice where quantity times unit price does not equal the line total — a simple arithmetic mistake that gets copied straight into QuickBooks and paid.
How we surface it →Vendor Corroboration
The process of cross-referencing multiple independent risk signals on a single vendor to identify patterns that individually could be coincidences but together demand investigation.
How we surface it →QuickBooks cleanup
A QuickBooks cleanup is the systematic review and correction of a client's QuickBooks file to surface and resolve errors, duplicates, missing information, and inconsistencies before they compound.
How we surface it →AP audit
An accounts payable audit is a review of a company's outgoing payments, vendor records, and purchase processes to identify duplicate payments, overcharges, fraud risks, and control weaknesses.
How we surface it →Vendor master file
The vendor master file is the complete list of all vendors in QuickBooks, containing each vendor's name, contact details, tax ID, payment terms, and transaction history.
How we surface it →Accounts payable fraud
Accounts payable fraud encompasses schemes where money is diverted from a business through its payment system — most commonly via ghost vendors, duplicate payments, split bills, and altered payee details.
How we surface it →Invoice reconciliation
Invoice reconciliation is the process of matching vendor invoices against purchase orders and receiving documents to verify that what was ordered, received, and billed all agree before payment.
How we surface it →Bank feed duplicate
A bank feed duplicate occurs when QuickBooks automatically imports a transaction from the connected bank feed that duplicates a manually entered bill or expense already in the books.
How we surface it →Approval threshold
An approval threshold is a dollar amount above which a bill or purchase requires a second sign-off — a core internal control in accounts payable.
How we surface it →Benford's Law
Benford's Law is a mathematical observation that in many naturally occurring collections of numbers, the leading digit is likely to be small — about 30% start with 1, declining to about 5% starting with 9.
How we surface it →Vendor risk score
A vendor risk score is a single number that rates a vendor's likelihood of being fabricated, high-risk, or anomalous based on multiple signals analyzed together.
How we surface it →QuickBooks ProAdvisor
A QuickBooks ProAdvisor is a certification program by Intuit for accounting professionals who demonstrate expertise in QuickBooks — they advise clients on setup, cleanup, and ongoing bookkeeping.
How we surface it →1099 vendor
A 1099 vendor is a contractor or non-incorporated service provider to whom a business paid $600 or more in a calendar year, requiring a Form 1099-NEC to be filed with the IRS.
How we surface it →Purchase order matching
Purchase order matching is the process of verifying that vendor bills are backed by authorized purchase orders — a key internal control that prevents maverick spend and unauthorized purchases.
How we surface it →GL coding
GL coding is the assignment of every transaction to the correct general ledger account — getting it wrong distorts financial reports, departmental budgets, and tax filings.
How we surface it →Internal controls AP
AP internal controls are the policies, procedures, and checks that prevent errors and fraud in the accounts payable process — including approval thresholds, segregation of duties, vendor verification, and reconciliation.
How we surface it →See these on your own books — free.
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