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A finance team suspects money is slipping through fees, short payments and tax deductions but has no quick way to measure it.
Run five two-file comparisons on one month of data: sales against bank credits, charged fee rate against contracted rate, TDS deducted against the tax credit statement, open short-paid invoices, and month-end write-offs without a reason.
Last month's bank statement, sales register, settlement reports, fee contract, tax credit statement, receivables ageing and month-end journals, plus a minimum amount worth chasing.
A one-page list of recoverable differences, each tagged with its leakage class, amount, owner and follow-up date.
You can find most revenue leakage in one afternoon with five checks on last month’s data. Compare sales against bank credits, the fee rate charged against your contract, TDS deducted against your tax credit statement, invoices that were paid short, and write-offs booked at month-end. Each check needs only two files you already have.
Revenue leakage means money you earned but did not receive, or paid but did not owe. It rarely shows up as one big loss. It hides as many small differences that nobody chased.
What does each check compare, and which files do I need?
Before you start, set a floor, such as ₹500 per item. Anything smaller is noted but not chased.
- Sales against bank credits. Take every sale or settlement you expected in the month and find its credit in the bank statement. A sale with no credit, or a credit smaller than expected with no reason, is a difference.
- Fee rate against contract. Divide the fees deducted by your payment gateway or marketplace by the sales they relate to. Compare that effective rate with the rate in your agreement.
- TDS deducted against the tax credit statement. List the TDS your customers deducted from payments. Check each amount in your tax credit statement (Form 26AS for the 1961 Act years; Form 168 under the Income-tax Act 2025). Anything missing is a credit you cannot claim yet.
- Open short-paid invoices. Filter your receivables for invoices where the amount received is less than billed. Check that each gap has a reason and an owner.
- Month-end write-offs. List the journal entries posted in the last three days of the month that clear small balances to a sundry or round-off account. Each one needs a written reason.
Which leakage class does each check find?
The class names below come from the Seven Classes of Reconciliation Leakage framework.
| Check | Source A | Source B | Leakage class | ₹ example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Sales vs credits | Sales register or settlement report | Bank statement | Short-settlement leakage | A ₹9,000 settlement never credited |
| 2. Fee rate vs contract | Settlement report fee lines | Fee agreement | Fee & commission leakage | 2.0 percent charged against 1.8 percent agreed |
| 3. TDS vs credit statement | Customer TDS deductions in the ledger | Form 26AS or Form 168 | Tax-deduction leakage | ₹22,000 deducted but not reported |
| 4. Short-paid invoices | Invoices billed | Amounts received | Short-settlement leakage | ₹14,000 short with no reason |
| 5. Month-end write-offs | Journal entries | Supporting reason | Unexplained variance | ₹7,500 cleared to round-off |
Worked example: an ₹80,00,000 month
A distributor billed ₹80,00,000 in September. Of that, ₹30,00,000 came through a payment gateway and the rest by NEFT and RTGS from business customers. The accountant runs the five checks.
Check 1. Every settlement is in the bank except one day’s gateway settlement of ₹9,000. The gateway report shows it as paid, but no credit arrived.
Check 2. The agreement says 1.8 percent. On ₹30,00,000, that is ₹54,000. The settlement reports show fees of ₹60,000, which is 2.0 percent. The overcharge is ₹6,000 (GST charged on the extra fee is a further item to raise with the gateway).
Check 3. Customers deducted ₹64,000 of TDS. The tax credit statement shows ₹42,000. Two customers have not reported ₹22,000.
Check 4. Seven invoices were paid short. Five have reasons on file (agreed discounts with credit notes). Two, totalling ₹14,000, have no reason at all.
Check 5. Four entries on 30 September cleared ₹7,500 of small balances to round-off with no note.
| Item | Class | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Missing settlement | Short-settlement leakage | ₹9,000 |
| Fee overcharge | Fee & commission leakage | ₹6,000 |
| TDS not reported | Tax-deduction leakage | ₹22,000 |
| Unexplained short payments | Short-settlement leakage | ₹14,000 |
| Write-offs without reason | Unexplained variance | ₹7,500 |
| Total recoverable | ₹58,500 |
Check the total: ₹9,000 plus ₹6,000 is ₹15,000. Add ₹22,000 to get ₹37,000. Add ₹14,000 to get ₹51,000. Add ₹7,500 to get ₹58,500.
That is 0.73 percent of the month’s billing. Small, but it repeats every month. Over a year at the same rate it would be about ₹7 lakh. You can test your own numbers with the revenue leakage calculator.
How do I turn the list into recoveries?
A list nobody owns becomes next month’s list too. For each line:
- Owner. The person who will raise it: the AR executive for short payments, the treasury person for gateway fees.
- Action. A ticket with the gateway, an email to the customer asking them to file their TDS return, a request for a credit note.
- Date. When you will check again, typically 7 to 15 days later.
- Evidence. Attach the settlement line, the contract clause or the tax credit statement extract.
Run the same five checks next month. If the same class keeps appearing, the fix is a process change, not another chase.
What to read next
Next, read the revenue leakage recovery playbook, which covers how to run recoveries with owners and deadlines. For the bigger picture, see the revenue leakage guide for Indian finance teams and the Seven Classes of Reconciliation Leakage.
TransactIG matches bank statement lines to your books and reconciles TDS, with an exception queue and audit-ready exports, so checks 1 and 3 run every period rather than once a month.