The Friday Funnel: How Cybercriminals Target AP Teams When They’re Most Vulnerable

79% of organizations experienced payments fraud in 2024. 

Nearly four out of five finance teams were targeted by payment fraud last year, according to the Association for Financial Professionals’ 2025 Payments Fraud and Control Survey. Business Email Compromise (BEC) accounted for the majority of attacks, while wire transfers surpassed ACH as the most attacked payment method. Recovery rates are declining. Only 22% of organizations managed to recover at least 75% of lost funds, down from 41% the year before. 

This is the environment AP teams are working in. What makes this environment especially challenging isn't just the volume of attacks, it's the timing. Fraudsters have identified a vulnerability window they exploit when vigilance is lowest: “The Friday Funnel.” 

Why AP Teams Are Exposed on Fridays 

Fraudsters do not send phishing emails at random. They engineer them for maximum impact. Late Friday afternoons are particularly vulnerable because: 

• Executives and approvers are often offline. 
• AP teams are rushing to close invoices before cutoff times. 
• End-of-week fatigue makes red flags easier to miss. 

AP teams face additional natural exposure through transaction-heavy workflows, email-driven communication, and trust-based executive requests that make fraud easy to slip through. Over a third of BEC attempts occur on Fridays, when processes are rushed and oversight is stretched thin. 

Fraudsters focus on AP because this is where the money moves every day. Wire transfers, their preferred method, offer little chance of recovery once funds are sent. That combination of timing and inherent exposure creates the funnel scammers rely on. 

The Human and Financial Toll 

The Friday Funnel has already cost organizations billions. 

Real-world cases include: 

• Grand Rapids Public Schools wired $2.8 million to fraudsters posing as a vendor. 
• Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta lost $3.6 million via a spoofed CFO email. 
• A French real estate firm transferred €38 million after a forged executive directive. 
• Beck Properties (MN) lost $735,000 to a fraudulent subcontractor scheme. 
• Athens, Ohio misdirected $721,976 after attackers spoofed contractor emails. 

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reports that global exposed losses from BEC scams have exceeded $55 billion since 2013.   

But the financial hit is only the beginning. Fraud events trigger forensic audits, weaken vendor trust, damage reputations, and add stress for AP teams who are often left wondering what more they could have done. For public-facing organizations like schools, municipalities, and hospitals, the reputational fallout often lingers far longer than the fraud itself. 

How the Friday Funnel Hits Every Industry 

Fraud looks a little different depending on the industry, but the Friday Funnel makes every sector more vulnerable. Attackers know that when teams are rushing to close the week, details get overlooked and controls get bypassed. 

• Manufacturing. With hundreds of invoices hitting AP at once, a fake vendor request can blend in. Late-week urgency only increases the odds of a fraudulent transfer slipping through. 
• Healthcare. Hospitals juggling contracts for supplies and services cannot afford delays. A Friday payment scam can mean shortages or weekend disruptions that hit frontline staff. 
• Municipalities. Lean city finance teams often have fewer approval layers. On a Friday afternoon, a single spoofed contractor email can redirect taxpayer funds before there’s a chance to verify it. 
• Higher Education. Universities managing multimillion-dollar construction projects face steady fraud attempts. End-of-week deadlines on big projects are prime opportunities for scammers to sneak in. 
• Global Corporations. Even the largest enterprises are not immune. Fraudsters time impersonation emails around closing deals and Friday funding transfers, knowing that approvals may be rushed. 

Across industries, the pattern is the same: fraud succeeds when urgency and trust overpower process, and the end of the week gives criminals the perfect opening. 

The Rise of AI-Powered Attacks 

Gone are the days of typo-ridden spam. In 2024, 40% of BEC emails were AI-generated, making them polished, convincing, and difficult to distinguish from legitimate requests. 

Compounding the risk, Vendor Email Compromise (VEC), where attackers hijack actual vendor accounts, spiked nearly 50% year-over-year. When a request for new bank details comes from a legitimate vendor address at 4:45 p.m. on Friday, human defenses are often at their weakest. 

The CFO’s Perspective 

While AP clerks press “send,” the fallout ultimately lands with finance leadership. Fraud does not just impact operations; it affects governance and strategy. 

• Liquidity shocks. Large wires disrupt working capital and downstream payments. 
• Audit and compliance. SOX violations or failed financial controls raise regulatory scrutiny. 
• Stakeholder confidence. Board members, investors, and credit agencies question leadership oversight when significant fraud becomes public. 
• Investor relations. Analysts and credit agencies question resilience when fraud becomes public. 
• Reputation. Rebuilding trust, especially in public companies, takes significant time and effort. 

Fraud management has become a board-level priority, requiring stronger analytics, governance, and investment in resilient controls. For CFOs, Friday Funnel scams highlight gaps in resilience that ripple well beyond AP. 

Given these board-level implications, many CFOs are turning to automation not just as an operational improvement, but as a critical risk management strategy. 

Automation as a Guardrail 

Training employees matters, but fraudsters exploit timing, fatigue, and pressure, which are factors training alone cannot fix. Automation provides guardrails that stay in place even when humans are stretched. 

Practical defenses include: 

• Approval workflows. No skipping steps, even at 4:55 p.m. on Friday. 
• Vendor verification. Account detail changes flagged against trusted sources. 
• Anomaly detection. Out-of-pattern requests, whether timing, size, or vendor, are automatically escalated. 
• Real-time alerts. Notifications reach managers instantly, whether online or offline. 
• Audit-ready trails. Every step logged, simplifying investigations and compliance reporting.
  

Real-world use cases:

• Vendor onboarding. Automation confirms tax IDs and banking information before payments ever begin. 
• Exception handling. Instead of slipping through, mismatched invoices are routed to supervisors automatically. 
• Escalation chains. If an approver is offline, automation reroutes the request rather than letting it stall or slip by unchecked. 

Organizations that strengthen their automation frameworks often see fraud-related losses drop significantly, in some cases by as much as 25–30%. 

Broader Value: Finance Beyond Fraud Defense 

Fraud protection is the urgent case for automation, but the strategic benefits extend further. 

Automation supports: 

• Forecasting. With validated AP data, CFOs improve cash flow visibility during volatile markets. 
• Efficiency. Automation can reduce invoice processing costs by as much as 60%, freeing up resources for higher-value work. 
• Employee engagement. Less time firefighting, more time analyzing. 
• Vendor confidence. Reliable payments improve supplier relationships and contract leverage. 
• Resilience. Automated processes withstand labor shortages and economic uncertainty better than manual workflows. 

Fraud prevention is the immediate payoff. Long-term, automation empowers finance teams to operate with greater accuracy, confidence, and strategic agility. 

Closing the Funnel Before It Opens 

The Friday Funnel exists because fraudsters understand human patterns: rushed Fridays, missing approvers, and a fatigue-induced drop in scrutiny. These conditions can create openings that lead to reputational strain, vendor frustration, and financial challenges. 

Closing that funnel isn’t about blame. It’s about putting structure in place so teams can stay protected even when pressure peaks. Automation makes that possible by validating vendors, flagging anomalies, and enforcing approval workflows that hold firm when human focus fades. 

For finance leaders ready to build systematic defenses against Friday fraud, our post 'From Gut Check to Game Plan' shows how automation moves AP teams beyond risky gut decisions to foolproof processes that work even when pressure peaks.