The ongoing battle of some of the states against Amazon regarding sales tax was escalated to a new level when the Wall Street Journal carried a front page article on the issue.

It demonstrates how determined the states are to get every last nickel they feel is owed them - and should be a warning to those who take their regulatory reporting responsibilities lightly. Neither the states nor the IRS is going to give a pass to anyone they deem not paying their fair share.

AP Now has several CDs and upcoming webinars to help organizations work through these issues.

Build your AP CD Library - 1099, Sales Tax and Unclaimed Property topics in addition to AP Best Practice topics.

Read the Wall Street Journal article

The cell phone bill, as those accounts payable professionals whose companies give cell phones to employees, is a nightmare to administer - both from an operational standpoint and tax view.

As you may know, the minutes are supposed to be allocated between personal and business use and then income tax paid by the employee on the value of the personal use. The employer is supposed to add the value to the employee’s W-2. 

There’s been a lot of outcry on this and the new administration is looking at amending the law. One proposal floated earlier this week involved a uniform 25% being allocated to personal use by everyone. This led to an outcry led by some of the telecoms.

Now, it looks like that may fade - although nothing has been decided yet. Check back and we’ll update you as we follow this issue - or sign up for our ezine where we keep our readers abreast of payment issues such as this.

(c) 2009 Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow

While probably not as interesting as whether Susan Boyle will sing in Glasgow, the question of whether your controls are adequate to stop duplicate payments is something most organizations should be concerned about. Yet, often they get lulled into a false sense of security and think they don’t have a problem.

If you fall into that group, we invite you to take our Duplicate Payment Challenge. This 25-question diagnostic is part of AP Now’s Duplicate Payment Resource Center. If after taking the quiz, you do discover a few loopholes, visit the rest of the center for more timely advice on how to avoid those nasty overpayments.

As the recession wears on, we continue to hear stories of an increased number of fraud attempts and, unfortunately, sometimes they are successful. That’s why we are advising our readers to be especially diligent in getting their bank recs done on a timely basis. Do not let them sit—you could end up not being reimbursed for an out-an-out fraud. Don’t think that because you’ve never had a fraud in the past it couldn’t happen to you. It can.

We’ve also put together a collection of articles on payment fraud. This electronic document contains four articles that originally appeared in the Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow newsletter. This publication will be delivered by e-mail to the address you provide during the purchase. The articles include:

1. 5 Ways to Protect Your Organization From Payment Fraud (Yes, You!)
2. Best Practices to Avoid Check Request Fraud and Duplicate Payments
3. A Simple Solution to Stop a New Fraud
4. Book Excerpt: Check Fraud: Still a Huge Problem

Cost: $4.95

Click here to pay by credit card or to pay by check use our Comprehensive Order form which can be downloaded here.

We’ll be discussing fraud prevention and detection in depth on July 29^th. We hope you’ll join us for that webinar.

For details about the Fraud Prevention/Detection Best Practice webinar or CD

They’re coming: are you ready? Proposed penalty notices is what we’re talking about - and if you work with them you know what a pain they can be.

Have you ever received a proposed penalty notice from the IRS and decided that even though it was wrong, the dollar amount was so small it was not worth fighting it? “Bad idea,” says Steve Mercatante, Esq. “You’re now setting a precedent as far as the IRS is concerned.”

Mercatante will join us on July 23 to identify this and other poor practices when it comes to proposed penalty notices. He’ll also provide you with the advice you need to negotiate these notices and ensure you are not making things worse for your organization in years to come. The CD will be available after that date.

For additional information or to sign up for the Proposed Penalty Notice webinar or purchase the CD

(c) 2009

I’ve been writing about accounts payable issues for over 15 years and involved with them professionally even longer. When I look back over the way we handled AP when I first started, I see how very different it was—no e-mail, very few electronic payments, tons of rush checks, and almost 100% manual processing. As for duplicate payments (visit our Duplicate Payment Resource Center for help with that issue), we never even worried about them, although I’m sure we must have made quite a few.

So, accounts payable has certainly changed. But then when I look at what’s occurred in the last two or three years I’m downright astounded. We’ve probably had as much change in the last few years as we had in the previous 10. What I find most compelling is the number of best practices that either no longer work or are completely changed.

Apparently many of our readers agree with me as we’ve seen an unprecedented number of signups for our June 11 Best Practices webinar. During that event we will also talk about best practices that no longer work. That alone is worth the price of admission. Of course, the CD will still be available for sale after that.

For additional information or to sign up for the AP Best Practices webinar/CD

http://www.ap-now.com/webinar/APbestpractices.html

Occasionally we get calls at Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow from a CEO or CFO looking for a consultant to help them reengineer their accounts payable departments. Inevitably these calls are a result of one of two things—neither of which is good. Either the accounts payable process has gotten so bogged down with checks going out so late that suppliers are screaming about credit holds or the company’s auditors are citing the accounts payable process in their management report. (By the way, often the cause for these problems lies out side accounts payable but that—as they say—is another story.)

When we go in and investigate, the answer is always the same. The organization is not employing anything that even vaguely resembles best practices in their accounts payable process. Assuming there is no cash flow issue, these problems are resolved by the implementation of best practices. Often this is simply a matter of sitting with management and explaining what should be done and the ramifications of not following this advice. Interestingly, we are sometimes recommending the same things that the accounts payable manager had suggested but been overruled on.

This is one of the reasons we suggest that those attending our Accounts Payable Best Practices webinar on June 11 invite their CFO to join them for the session. By putting the call on a speaker phone, you can have many people listen to the session. Alternatively, you can achieve the same result by purchasing the CD. Please note: Registration for this event has been heavy. To ensure everyone gets their handout material in adequate time, registration for this event will close at 5PM on June 10. Of course, CDs can be purchased at any time.

(c) 2009 Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow and CRYSTALLUS, Inc.

One of the side benefits from implementing accounts payable best practices is they generally make fraud harder to commit. And, in a faltering economy, fraud increases—it’s that simple. (Many readers are probably thinking that describing the current mess as faltering is putting too good a face on it. And, they may be correct, but we digress.)

Just think about appropriate segregation of duties, which is at the top of the list for accounts payable best practices. It definitely makes it harder for an employee to defraud the organization.

Speaking of best practices, we received a few notes from readers who disagreed with us when we said that we did not believe that positive pay was the best defense against check fraud. We stand by that position. It is the second best defense. The absolute best defense is payee name positive pay. If you haven’t discussed it with your bank yet, don’t wait.

Accounts Payable Now and Tomorrow will focus two of its upcoming webinars on Accounts Payable Best Practices and Fraud Prevention and Detection. In this market they are two of the most important issues for all organizations.

You can find information about our July 29 Fraud webinar or CD on our website. Additional information or to register for the June 11 AP Best Practices webinar or CD available.

(c) 2009 Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow

This week in our weekly Accounts Payable ezine (signup at http://ap-now.com/ezinesignup.html) as well as in our monthly print newsletter, Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow, we discussed what should be in a good invoice.  

Readers wrote in to say that many received invoices without our recommended minimum information. Some were reluctant to follow our best practice advice of returning those invoices with a request that it be formated with the requisite information so it could be processed quickly and the vendor paid faster. Those who wrote should know they are not alone. Many organizations don’t follow this best practice piece of advice for fear of offending suppliers.

I understand. But, truth be told, invoices that have the required information are generally process faster and hence you are doing the vendor a favor in the long run.

We received a note from one savvy Assistant Controller noting that Terms (net 30) would also be helpful. I’d expand that asking the vendor to include terms on the invoice. The only problem with that request is AP would then have to check those terms against the agreed upon terms stored in the accounting system. I wouldn’t put it past a few struggling vendors to improve the payment terms in hopes of getting paid early - but maybe I’m a cynic.

(c) 2009 Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow

I just read a report about the latest proposals from the SEC and was pleased to see that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow are both big proponents of surprise audits.

For accounts payable professionals this is especially important if petty cash boxes are involved. Of course, a better practice, regarding petty cash boxes, is to NOT have them at all. Now, if we could only get the SEC to weigh in on Rush Checks.

(c) 2009 Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow