Have you purchased/read an Accounts Payable Book in the last 3 years?

If you’ve purchased an accounts payable book in the last three years, we’d greatly appreciate it if you would respond to a few of our questions. It should take less than two minutes – and you don’t have to leave your contact info unless you want. Your insights are appreciated as they will help me plan for the future. Go here for my two-minute survey.  Thank you. Mary Schaeffer.

It is important to keep in mind that accounts payable does not operate in a vacuum but is part of a bigger process, generally referred to as procure to pay or P2P. Truth be told, the way those other functions are handled also affects the productivity of the accounts payable function. They are interdependent on each other. While most of the dialog about P2P breakdowns usually revolves around the interactions between purchasing and accounts payable, that is only part of the chain. What follows is a review of some strategies that will make the entire P2P process run smoother.

The First Step

Before trying to convince other departments to make the following changes, figure out how they will benefit from your recommendations. Then, when you ask them for the changes, lead with their benefits.

What might those benefits be? For purchasing, improved and timelier data will translate into fewer annoying calls from accounts payable and aggravated calls from their suppliers. The same can be said for receiving – especially if they are careful in checking packing slips.

Remember, the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) always works. So, don’t start by telling them what you need, explain how your request will also benefit them.

The rest of this article appears in the August issue of Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow. That issue also includes articles on P-card Fraud Prevention, ACH Best Practices, Void checks, Auditors’ Unclaimed Property Secrets, Collection W-9s, Avoiding Uneven T&E Policy Enforcement. You can purchase an electronic copy of the August issue here.

For additional information or to Subscribe to Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow.

(c)2010 CRYSTALLUS Inc.

When was the last time your accounts payable department requested and checked vendor statements? Most readers know they should periodically request statements from vendors, insisting that the statements show all activity, including open credits. But how many actually get around to this task. Once you’ve identified open credits, either request a check for those items or use them against open invoices. Vendor credits often go unused simply because the customer (that’s you) doesn’t know about them and the supplier “forgets” to inform the customer.

Some organizations simply don’t have the staff to perform this task. If yours is one of them, consider hiring an audit firm to do this for you. If you limit the scope of the audit to this one task, you can usually negotiate a lower rate. In fact, there are some firms that specialize in vendors’ statements reviews. Since this work is often done on a contingency basis, management should not object. Given the fact that many organizations are actively searching for ways to increase the bottom line, this suggestion may very well be welcome by management. This is true even at organizations that had in the past, refused to consider this type of activity.

How often do your travelers check their credit card statements? If they are like me, it is once a month – right before I’m getting ready to pay the bill. This, as it turns out, is a really bad idea. A recent study  revealed that almost 40 percent of the credit card hacking cases last year involved the hotel industry. That’s right. Combine the fact that hotels don’t always do as good a job as they should when it comes to securing credit card data with the fact that many travelers are not vigilant about checking their credit card bills on a timely basis and you have a recipe for a fraud smorgasbord.

And that is what is happening. Crooks are getting a hold of this data and running up charges on the cards. In order not to get caught, your travelers need to start looking at their credit card statements on a very regular basis – either as soon as the bills arrive or, if they can, checking the charges online regularly.

To review other travel and entertainment best practices, consider AP Now’s T & E Best Practices to Ensure IRS Compliance and Prevent Fraud CD

(c) 2010 CRYSTALLUS, Inc. and Mary Schaeffer

Are you scrupulous about checking your master vendor file before setting up a new vendor? Do you just look and see if you have a vendor with the same name already set up? Or do you take it one step further? Before setting up a new vendor up—using your strict naming convention—check to see if you have a vendor set up with the same address or the same TIN. Taking this extra step will prevent those few vendors who may have been set up using a DBA or some other name from slipping through. True, you may have two different vendors with the same address, but they won’t have the same TIN. This extra step only takes a minute or two to execute but could save your organization thousands of dollars down the road.

(c) 2010 Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow

Wednesday was a very interesting day. I went to the all-day Masters session. It focused on Shared Services - with tons of information for everyone - regardless of whether they operated in a shared services environment or not.

This session had a number of panels and each had tons of audience participation. I don’t know whether I learned more from the panelists or the audience. What was very clear from all the discussion is that the landscape in accounts payable continues to change rapidly and we’ve all got to adapt or we’ll get left behind literally.

Most of the speakers had quite impressive resumes but the one that garnered the biggest laugh was the fellow from Disney who in addition to numerous acolades listed being a “trained husband” as one of his skills. He also noted that he didn’t work for just any Mickey-Mouse company.

Given the favorable response to the event, it will in all likelihood be repeated next year.

The networking that went on not only at this session but throughout the conference was amazing. I was very pleased to meet quite a few of our AP Now readers - a nice bonus for me.

Here’s something else I learned at this event. Do you remember in the Harry Potter movies (I confess, I’m a big fan.) the tables of food when the kids sit down to a meal at Hogwarths? Well a lot of it (if not all) came from the UK Costco. Okay that’s not information that will necessarily help you do a better job - but I found it interesting.

The IAPP set the bar high for next year’s event.

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

Another long day with a good start: breakfast with Cyrus Daftary - the international tax expert. This was followed by another group session featuring the very interesting Bryan Dodge. Expect to see of his advice in our Career section of the e-AP News - our weekly electronic publication. Sign up for the ezine here.

I presented at two sessions today: one on Payment Fraud and one on T&E. I had great audiences for both sessions with tons of questions at the T&E session. As you probably know I like to pepper my talks with real life stories and where I can let the audience vote on how they would have reacted in the same situation. I had a story about a guy who signed up for an audio conference, passed it off as a conference charging his company for airfare and a hotel room (in Orlando). Before I had finished a numer of the people in the audience were yelling “Fire him, fire him.”

There was a guy in the audience, an attorney, not an AP person. He interjected that it would depend, if the guy was a salesperson who brought a lot of money into the company you might want to overlook this transgression.  You should have heard the rest of the group. I gave him the opportunity to come up front and explain his side - an offer he intelligently declined. After the session, he came up and asked me, “what did I say that was so bad.”

As I said, great audiences and good interactions and audience participation. When I finished my last session I barely had time to get to the Integrating the procure to pay cycle. I picked up some new terminology: I2P - invoice to pay, describing our part of the P2P cycle.

Tomorrow is another early day. I’m going to the Masters Session and am looking forward to it. Don’t really know what it will be about but an very anxious to see. I am flying home tomorrow night so will probably not update until Thursday morning.

Thanks for listening.

Mary Schaeffer

(c) 2010 Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow

Up and out early - heading over for breakfast at 7 AM. Had an interesting chat with an AP manager from Canada who was very interested in AP automation - as were a lot of people. The keynote speaker was John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted. He was quite inspiring - a man to be admired.

Then off for my first talk on master vendor files. I was lucky, having a great audience and lots of audience participation. It was wonderful to see that over half the attendees cleanse their master vendor file at least once a year. Of course, this means that almost half aren’t following that practice. And, there were a few who have never cleansed the file. With the upcoming changes for 1099s (from the Healthcare Bill) master vendor file is quickly becoming a hot topic. Expect to see more on it in the coming months.

I then attended an automation session and was not surprised to find out that a small number of ap managers still must grapple with suppliers who have no computer access. This of course means that they cannot get 100% of their invoices electronically. Still, we’ve come a long way.

Lunch was followed by a brainstorming thought leadership session. We were broken into small groups and had to come up with recommendations and suggestions. The noise in that room (which may have had as many as 300 people - my unofficial estimate) was deafening. This was good because it meant there were lots of lively discussions going on. The group I was with had three managers from healthcare - and they agreed to further discussions about their unique issues.

Back for a bit before dinner and then breakfast (at the ungastly hour of 7:30 AM with Cyrus Daftary.

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

I’m at the IAPP conference. I arrived Sunday afternoon in time to attend the writing workshop. I believe it is always important to hear what other pros have to say about the profession and I was not disappointed.

It was interesting to find a number of accounts payable managers attending the session. Some were interested in writing articles but the majority indicated they had been charged with updating their policy and procedures manual and they were looking for pointers. Needless to say, that is a time-consuming detail driven job - and one that must be done by someone who knows what they are doing.

Yikes - breakfast at 7 tomorrow.

Do you find that many of the employees in your organization ask the same accounts payable questions over and over again? Does your staff waste a lot of time answering phone calls that really never should have been made? How many Rush checks could have been avoided if the submitters would just remember your cut-off time is noon and not three p.m.? You get the idea. If there were some way you could convey this standard information to employees you might be able to improve the productivity of your department while still maintaining that high level of customer service you strive to offer.

There are several strategies you can use to disseminate information. Start by preparing a FAQ (frequently asked questions) sheet and posting it on your Intranet site and departmental bulletin boards. Try to keep it short, as you will lose people if it is too long. You might also design a quarterly accounts payable newsletter for internal use. It can be one page (front and back) or longer. Use it to provide new information, news about personal or procedural changes, and to reiterate information that seems to have gotten lost. The last piece refers to those annoying questions that keep popping up. The efforts involved in producing these documents (FAQ and newsletter) will be worth the investment when the phone calls about these simple everyday issues plummet.

(c) 2010 Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow