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.

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.

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.