Does your heart drop when you hear someone ask one of your staffers why they are doing something a certain way only to hear, “I don’t know, we’ve always done it that way”—or worse—“Because the manager said to do it that way.” If your experiences are anything like mine, the staffer is sure to be offering up this explanation to the CFO or VP of Finance.

There are a number of reasons this happens. First, it could be exactly as the staffer replied. No one ever explained why they were doing certain things a certain way. Or, when they were new and the explanation was offered, it got lost in the haze of trying to learn the basic processes.

That’s part of the reason I wanted to develop the Laying a Strong Foundations for AP Basics course. Not only will we review the processes, we’ll explain why things are done the way they are. By the way, several organizations that have signed up also bought an Add-a-Buddy slot for their controller so he or she can listen to the information as well from the comfort of their office. We’re hoping that listening to this session will provide a clearer understanding of the challenges faced each day in accounts payable.

Additional information about the event and the CD that will be available after the session can be found at http://www.ap-now.com/accountspayablebasicswebinar.html 

One of the easiest ways to achieve outstanding, or olympic, results in any function is to avoid simple blunders. This is definitely true when it comes to accounts payable. The February issue of Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow identified ten such blunders. Here’s the start of the article with some of the blunders listed.

There are so many places where things can—and do—go wrong in accounts payable it would make your head spin. In truth, there are numerous quite simple things that anyone can do to make sure that their accounts payable operation runs as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, some of these tactics are overlooked and end up costing the companies involved dearly—with money leaking to the bottom line or just eating into staff time and productivity. What follows is a list of common blunders that can lead to trouble in accounts payable. Hopefully, you’ve dodged them all.

1) Did not put ACH blocks on accounts where debits were not permitted.

2) Did not make sure your staff understood that credits are money owed your organization not obligations to be paid.

3) Forgot to ask for an extension to file 1099 information—and had to hustle to meet the deadline.

The rest of this article, including the seven other blunders, is in the February 2010 issue of Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow. It also contains articles on proof of payment when paying electronically, best practices when moving to an ACH platform, addressing the sales and use tax “exempt or not” quandary, five tactics to use when vendors try to charge for paper invoices, best invoice receipt practices, NRA withholding basics, two unclaimed property myths detonated, and, of course, two pages packed with short tips and strategies.

You can purchase this single copy of the newsletter and it will be delivered electronically to your email address. Additional informatio about the newsletter available here.

The accounts payable and unclaimed property community suffered a serious blow on February 11 when William Fredrick “Will” Yancey passed away. Those who listened to him lecture about statistical sampling will always be grateful for the way he made this complex topic understandable to those who did not deal with it every day.

Those who had the privilege of dealing with him professionally will remember that he was always willing to lend a hand when a speaker was needed and more behind the scenes. He was quick to bring two people together whose paths might not otherwise cross when both might benefit professionally from the introduction.

He shall be missed but not forgotten.

Mary Schaeffer

I was working on an accounts payable article when the phone rang and to my disbelief it was a very pleasant young lady inquiring about the model number for our copier. I was flabbergasted; she was trying to pull the copier scam. The call lasted less than 30 seconds because as soon as she realized I knew what she was up to, she hung up. I sat there musing about it for a few minutes. I was perplexed at how this scam that is now at over 30 years old could still be going on—and apparently working. Doesn’t everyone know about it? And, then a light went off.

While most of our readers know about this scam, new folks to the working pool probably don’t. The crooks don’t want to get you or me on the phone, they’re hoping for the new hire with only a few years (or less) experience they can con into giving them the copier model number.

We’ve prepared a short white paper explaining this con in detail along with instructions on what employees can do to thwart it. To get it you must be signed up to receive AP Now’s free weekly ezine or subscribe to the Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow Newsletter or The CFO & Controllers’ Accounts Payable Management Journal.

After meeting one of these conditions, send an email to publisher@ap-now.com with the words Blog Copier Scam in the subject line.

Here’s a nifty little tip that will certainly help accounts payable with its master vendor file headaches.

Before setting a new vendor up in your master vendor file, check not only to see if the name has already been entered, but check if any other vendor in the file has the same address or TIN. This step will only take an extra minute or two but could save your company a lot of money but preventing inadvertent duplicate payments.

It’s the little strategies like this that add up and could make you an AP Super Bowl winner.

(c) 2010 Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow and CRYSTALLUS, Inc.

If not you should. An accounts payable professional recently wrote asking about a feature that causes some confusion. It was the request for what looked like personal information. Here’s my response.

Excerpted from the January 2010 issue of Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow.

Paper checks are costly, inefficient, and a huge headaches for those toiling away in accounts payable. Yet they remain the tool used to pay the majority of invoices, even at many organizations with the ability to pay electronically. To change this situation, it may be necessary to go on the offensive and find ways to grow your ACH program. It’s certainly worth the effort, given the nuisance of paper checks. What follows are seven assertive techniques to grow an ACH program be it one that is languishing or one that’s thriving but could use a little extra oomph.

Don’t overlook your Web site. Publish ACH information on the company Web site. Occasionally a vendor you might not have approached will want to participate. Make it easy. Also, if you are going to take this approach, include your vendor enrollment form on the site. Do this only if you are willing to include all vendors in the program. Otherwise, you may find your p-card vendors signing up for the program—and there goes your rebate.

The rest of this article, along with articles on: bank account takeovers that lead to unrecoverable transactions, AP New Year’s resolutions and how to keep them, 1099K (a new proposed IRS form), the Procurement/Finance Gap (an excerpt from a fine Baseware white paper), a naming convention check list you can use for your master vendor file, a look at recovery audits, and a overview of advanced 1099 issues for W-9s, are all in the January issue of Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow. Of course, the issue also includes two pages of tips and strategies you can use to fine-tune your AP process.

You can purchase the single issue using the link below or subscribe for one or two years and receive our quarterly podcasts as part of that subscription.

Purchase an electronic copy of the January 2010 issue of AP Now newsletter.

(c) 2010 Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow and CRYSTALLUS, Inc.

Let’s face it: the folks in accounts payable don’t always have the best reputation with other employees, especially if they handle travel and entertainment reimbursements. Let me go on the record by saying that rarely do I believe the reputation is deserved - but that ranting is for another posting.

Recently, the every-perceptive Dilbert focused on the reimbursement issue in a Sunday morning cartoon. My husband, Mr. Charm, couldn’t wait to show it to me. (He had to because I don’t read the comics). He could not resist his glee. “Here’s something for your ezine,” he chuckled.

“I don’t think so,” I replied after reading it. “This is not the image we like to portray.”

Then I received a note from a reader which said, “I thought you would like this since I was told from one of my salesman that this reminded him of me.”

She seemed pleased. So, in case you haven’t seen the cartoon, here’s the link.
http://www.dilbert.com/2010-01-10/

Did someone you know send it to you also?

As I understand it, Conan O’Brien is being asked to move his show back half an hour. In return he gets to continue receiving an annual salary of $15 million, if published reports are accurate. Now I suspect most accounts payable professionals reaction is the same as mine: “So, what’s the problem?”

While I understand that this might be a blow to his ego, he’s still bringing home $15 million. In this current economy, I suspect many professionals are being asked to do things they were not asked to do in easier times. They face a similar, albeit one with fewer dollars on the table, issue. Is what their bosses asking so unreasonable, it warrants quitting? Or, is this the time to be quiet, take on the task and who knows - maybe build your resume?

I suspect that those who have jobs will be given career building opportunities that they would not have been given just a few years ago. If you can recognize those situations and take advantage of them, you may be able to turn what looked like a lemon into some mighty tasty lemonade.

As I sit here and ponder AP, it becomes readily apparent just how much AP has changed in the last two to five years. We have problems today that simply did not exist a few years ago. ACH fraud, vendors demanding you accept invoices electronically or by fax, and really aggressive state auditors looking for unclaimed property and unpaid sales and use tax.

It made me wonder. What other headaches are our readers facing? From many of these problems emerge new best practices. What problems do you have today that you did not have two to five years ago? Please send your comments to publisher@ap-now.com with the words “AP Scoundrels” in the subject line. We’ll try to find solutions to as many of these problems as we can.