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K-12 procurement and finance teams are under increasing pressure: rising fraud attempts, vendor impersonation schemes, manual onboarding processes, and resource constraints make maintaining secure, compliant operations more challenging than ever.
For a school district like Toledo Public Schools — managing hundreds of vendors, frequent vendor banking changes, and tight compliance demands — effective fraud prevention for school districts became critical. In this fireside chat, the Toledo Public Schools financial leadership outlines how adopting PaymentWorks transformed their vendor onboarding and vendor management processes to dramatically reduce risk and improve operational security and efficiency.
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From Toledo Public Schools, hear how they accomplished:
Why Fraud Prevention in School Districts Matters and How Vendor Automation Helps
How PaymentWorks Helped Toledo Public Schools Build Fraud-Resistant Vendor Onboarding
Key Outcomes for Fraud Prevention in School Districts — What Toledo’s Experience Shows
Curious About Fraud Prevention in School Districts? Download our Solution Selection Guide
School districts operate with complex vendor ecosystems — from service providers and contractors to suppliers, maintenance vendors, consultants, and one-time payees. This complexity opens many opportunities for fraud: fictitious vendors, phishing scams, unauthorized banking-information changes, billing fraud, and payment redirection.
Failing to build robust supplier onboarding and vendor verification processes leaves districts vulnerable to:
Because of these risks, fraud prevention for school districts cannot be an afterthought — the vendor onboarding process is the first line of defense. A secure, automated vendor onboarding system reduces attack surfaces, strengthens verification, and helps enforce consistent internal controls.
By leveraging PaymentWorks, Toledo Public Schools replaced their manual, error-prone processes with a secure, automated workflow suited to school-district realities. Key improvements included:
Rather than relying on spreadsheets, phone calls, or unsecured emails for vendor banking changes, PaymentWorks provides a secure vendor onboarding portal. This reduces risk of fraudulent banking-info updates or payment redirection — a common vector in school-district fraud schemes
PaymentWorks shifts data entry and vendor onboarding tasks away from district staff, minimizing the chance of mistakes, mis-keyed data, or incomplete documentation — all of which can lead to compliance gaps or fraud vulnerabilities.
The system grants full visibility into vendor status, onboarding steps, and approval history — reducing ambiguity, enabling better oversight, and supporting audit and compliance needs. Staff no longer field repeated calls or emails asking “where’s my vendor?” because the portal provides real-time status tracking.
Toledo Public Schools reported converting around half of their check-based vendors to ACH via PaymentWorks — reducing reliance on paper checks (which are more susceptible to fraud) and moving toward electronic, traceable payments.
With centralized vendor onboarding and consistent processes, the district avoids the risks of duplicate or fictitious vendor records, reduces confusion across departments, and strengthens internal control over vendor management — a critical factor in preventing vendor- and procurement-related fraud.
Implementing a secure, automated vendor onboarding solution delivered measurable benefits for Toledo Public Schools, and underscores why every school district should consider similar measures:
These results illustrate how strong vendor onboarding and management practices are critical to fraud prevention for school districts — especially those operating at scale with many vendors and frequent payments.
