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.

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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.

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

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

Like any other profession, accounts payable has its own jargon. Most of the time, when we talk about POs or T&E we don’t even realize we’re doing it—until someone interrupts us and asks what the term means. Sometimes, if you’re like me, you feel a little foolish asking what someone meant by a certain buzzword. Now, we’ve created a resource where you can go and look up the meaning. I call it an AP cheat sheet. So, take a look at it and if you think we should add anything, send a note to publisher@ap-now.com with your suggestions.

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

Here’s a tip from the Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow newsletter. As we approach unclaimed property reporting time, one of the oft overlooked benefits of making ACH payments becomes more obvious. If you’ve been pushing for an electronic payment program don’t overlook this benefit: when payments are made electronically, there are never any uncashed checks to be chased and then reported and remitted to the states. One big headache goes away—and bank reconciliations sure get a lot easier with no outstanding checks.

(c) 2009 Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow

Are you having trouble convincing employees to sign up for direct deposit - or perhaps having difficulty getting them to accept their T&E reimbursements using ACH? Well, now even the IRS has found a way to entice people - although it may be a bit too late.

The IRS rebates are going first to those who filed and got their refunds deposited electronically. Paper checks will be mailed to those who did not provide bank account information but those checks will go later. This is just one more example of why paper checks should be the payment mechanism of last resort!