How it works
Every payment checked before execution
The auditor checks afterwards, once the payment has already been made. That is why many municipalities also carry out their own preventive sample check on the payment batch. But a sample offers no certainty: only the selected payments are reviewed, and whether that one anomaly happens to be among them is a matter of chance. What's more, a sample check learns nothing. What you check today, you will check again next month.
SafeSpend works differently. The system is trained once on your trusted creditor file, and that is exactly what makes it so powerful. From that moment on, not just a selection from the batch is checked, but every single payment, before it goes out the door. What is trustworthy goes straight through to the bank without delay. Only what deviates is flagged.
Step 1. Training: once, together with you
At the start, we review your creditor file together: name, IBAN and Chamber of Commerce (KvK) number are verified externally and loaded as a trusted baseline. From then on, SafeSpend knows your payment process, and you only need to look at what deviates from it.
Step 2. Every payment checked
Every payment batch from your ERP goes through a structured control process: duplicate payments, deviating amounts, unknown or changed account numbers, and verification of name, IBAN and KvK number.
Not every new creditor is a risk. You set a cumulative threshold for each payment flow. Occasional small payments simply go through; only when the total paid to a new counterparty exceeds that threshold is the payment flagged.
The name-IBAN check is built into the process. If a new counterparty is flagged, SafeSpend automatically verifies whether the name and account number match. If the counterparty also appears in other connected administrations, you can choose to have the signal handled automatically. If not, your employee assesses the signal, with all the context already prepared.
Step 3. Every signal makes SafeSpend smarter
An approved counterparty is trusted from then on: it will not be flagged again. And because municipalities benefit from each other's data, every signal is weighed using collective payment intelligence: a new counterparty that appears nowhere else carries more weight than one that hundreds of organisations have been paying for years, without any value judgement. Fraudulent parties, however, are actively shared: always anonymously, never traceable to a municipality.
Pre-clearance: vetting before a relation enters your ERP
Sometimes you already know in advance that a new relation matters: a new supplier from a tender, or a care provider you are entering into a contract with. With pre-clearance, you consult all available data whenever it suits you, before the relation is even in your ERP: name-IBAN check, verification of KvK details and the collective payment intelligence of connected municipalities. If everything checks out, you can mark the relation as trusted in SafeSpend straight away.
Pre-clearance does not replace the cumulative threshold, it complements it. You still don't need to investigate every new creditor in advance. But where you do want to, you keep your creditor file clean at the source, and even the first payment goes through without delay.
Urgent payments without a back door
Urgency is a fraudster's favourite weapon. CEO fraud thrives on time pressure. That is why SafeSpend has a dedicated urgent payment functionality: the urgent payment is created in SafeSpend and goes through exactly the same checks as a regular batch, including the name-IBAN check. On top of that, every urgent payment always triggers an additional check, precisely because it is urgent.
Demonstrable to the auditor
Segregation of duties is technically enforced in SafeSpend: creating, authorising and releasing a payment can never be done by the same person. Every step is recorded in a complete audit trail: per step, per user, per outcome. Approved payments also remain accessible per batch.
When the auditor asks for substantiation, it's already there. No preparation, no reconstruction, no peak at year-end closing.
Built on proven technology
SafeSpend is built on the Continuous Auditor by De Wielick BV: the data analysis platform used to audit more than 100 municipalities on their outgoing payment flows, and used by leading accounting firms to assess financial administrations for reliability, accuracy and completeness. The same algorithms, but applied preventively.
SafeSpend is used by municipalities of all sizes, from the G4 (the four largest Dutch cities) to small municipalities, and works across multiple ERP systems, with checks configured specifically for each payment flow.