March, 2000 | Vol. 2000 No. 03

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Managing Accounts Payable

Managing Accounts Payable is the leading source of information for accounts payable professionals and those responsible for the function. Each monthly issue contains 5-7 articles, 6-10 short news clips, a manager's forum on the back page and calendar of upcoming seminars and conferences. The material comes from internal research, surveys, case studies, conference material and interviews.

Subscribers to the newsletter have the opportunity each year to participate in a benchmarking or operations survey. Participants receive the results for free. Topics covered in the newsletter include: invoice handling; check preparation, printing and filing; exception and Rush check processing; techniques for reducing duplicate payments; staff and career management; working with other departments, master vendor files; terms and discounts; T&E; VAT Reclaim, EDI; XML; technology; imaging p-cards; post audit firms; benchmarking; 1099s; check fraud; case studies; escheat or unclaimed property; and sales and use tax. Spot e-mail surveys are also conducted and reported on when issues such as the 9/11 tragedy occur.

The newsletter sponsors five accounts payable conferences each year. An annual buyers’ guide is included with a subscription.

March, 2000 Table of Contents [ toggle snippets ]

Accounts Payable Managers' Forum (0004)
1. Reducing errors related to payments
2. Reducing the number of phone calls due to short pays

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How to Win the A/P Staff Hiring Battle
Current national averages predict that over the next three years you will lose 40% to 50% of your key accounts payable staff. You’ll also lose everything you spent on hiring and training those people. However, before you start sending out flurries of ads, the following expert advice offers a practical step-by-step approach to hiring who that will stay.

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How to Get Management on Your Side to Reduce Rush Checks
“After 50 years of processing emergency checks on a daily basis, we significantly reduced the num-ber of such occurrences,” says one savvy accounts payable manager. How? She got management on her side. Everyone who works in accounts payable knows that rush checks are inefficient, costly, and can lead to duplicate payments and fraud. Unfortunately, management often doesn’t understand what the big deal is.

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How Compass Group Succeeded With A/P’s Multi-Card Program
Multi-purchase card programs are the answer to Corporate America’s dreams on how to handle relatively small dollar payments. P-cards are now widely used for corporate purchases, T&E cards, and Fleet cards for vehicle-related transactions. However, some employees are complaining about having to carry around so many different cards. Additional economies of scale can obviously be achieved if programs could be combined.

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Now Is the Time to Fix All of Next Year’s 1099 Problems
Are you letting out a sigh of relief now that 1099s have been issued and don’t have to cope with, what one Managing Accounts Payable subscriber describes as, “that old clunky software?” for another year? Stop right there. If you are not happy with your 1099 policy, procedures or software, now is the time to deal with those issues—not next January.

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What A/P Needs to Know About Digital Signatures & Encryption
One of the biggest fears your boss has about the Internet is the lack of security. The solution to the security problem lies in encryption and digital signatures. A/P professionals need to understand that these new technologies are coming to accounts payable—quickly.

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Chevron’s A/P Department Sets Tone for Corporate Internet Security Policy
Are you sure that every check and wire request that you receive is valid? Are you concerned that perhaps some of those requisitions for large dollar payments from overseas may not be from legitimate sources? Do you want to verify that the money you send out goes where it is supposed to go? Does using the Internet for data transmission make you uncomfortable? Well, the accounts payable folks at Chevron also had these concerns, but they were especially concerned about the requests for payments coming in from overseas.

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Manag Accts Payble Accounts Payable Managers’ Forum MAP0003
1. Eliminating rush checks
2. Eliminating the problem of lost faxes
3. Improving departmental morale

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Electronic Payment Survey: EI & EPI Task Force Asks for Your Help
Accounts payable professionals now have a golden opportunity to change the way business-to-business (B2B) billing is done. A handful of innovative companies, and Managing Accounts Payable, have created a taskforce to develop a workable electronic invoice solution. After reviewing what is presently available, it became apparent that current solutions do not meet the needs of all market participants.

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A/P Clerks’ Salaries Now Average ,000
Accounts payable clerks now earn an average of $23,199 annually, with salaries ranging, on average, from $19,279 to $28,564. The best paid are those who work at small companies with annual sales between $10 and $25 million. These folks make an average of $2,000 a year more than those who toil at the very largest companies—not exactly what one would have expected before seeing the results.

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Use These Electronic Helpers to Preserve E-Ticket Savings
If your company’s travelers are using e-tickets, chances are that some of the cost savings are going down the drain. That’s because travelers who change their flights at the last minute can easily forget to cash in unused tickets.

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Here's What You Should Include on Your A/P Web Page
Web sites are the way leading A/P depart-ments are now getting relevant information into the hands of those who need it—both inside and outside of the company. These sites offer quick access to important information without disrupt-ing the accounts payable staff with mundane questions. Managing Accounts Payable has received a number of phone calls from subscrib-ers who want to set up such sites but don’t know what details to include. After talking to several accounts payable professionals who have set-up such sites, we have come up with the following list.

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New Web Research Tools For Detecting Vendor Fraud
Detecting vendor fraud is not a simple job. Most accounts payable professionals assume that when an invoice floats across their desk it is from a legitimate business. While this may have been an accurate assumption at one time, it is no longer true. Accounts payable professionals must now be able to ascertain which invoices are from phony vendors. The Web sites in the accompanying sidebar provide infor-mation, which will help accounts payable managers make this determination.

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17 Ways to Reorganize Your A/P Department & Improve Its Productivity
When was the last time you changed the way your accounts payable department was organized? Has it been set up the same way for eons simply because “that’s the way it has always been?” In a recent Managing Accounts Payable survey, numerous subscribers recounted tales of improving operations simply by saying, “perhaps there is a better way.”

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Case Study: How to Redesign Your Accounts Payable Department
Every accounts payable department has stress, but what do you do when it begins to overwhelm your staff? Paul Kajanoff, an AP manager at PEMCO financial Services, whose department needed a complete overhaul, shared his solutions with the attendees at the recent IOMA/IMI Accounts Payable Con-ference. He also discussed the success of the program and the challenges that lay ahead.

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Mark These Dates On Your Calendar to Apply for VAT Refunds
The deadlines for filing VAT refunds can be confusing as they are not all the same. To help Manag-ing Accounts Payable’s subscribers, Meridian VAT Reclaim (www.meridianvat.com) has prepared the following guidelines:

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It’s Time to Take a Long Hard Look at Titles for A/P Pros
It is time for corporations to take a long hard look at the titles for accounts payable professionals.

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Online Business-to-Business Commerce
Are you ready to handle an infusion of invoices from your vendors over the Internet? Have you developed systems and procedures that will handle transactions being initiated not only on your com-pany web site, but also on someone else’s? Think the Internet won’t play such an intrusive role in business commerce for another five to ten years? Well, think again. Both General Motors and Ford have announced massive plans to become powerful players in the e-commerce arena—and we are not talking about selling cars.

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How to Get the Best A/P Reports From New Accounting Software
Many companies, in their zeal to reengineer and avoid Y2K issues, have installed spiffy new ERP accounting systems. Although this is a positive step on many fronts, it presents new challenges to the accounts payable professionals. Since data in these systems can be difficult to access effectively, more-over, while these systems may have easy-to-use query and reporting tools, many accounts payable professionals find it difficult to pull out the needed information.

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17 Ways A/P Pros Use Software to Improve Department Operations
A recent Managing Accounts Payable survey identified the 17 most innovative changes made to accounts payable:

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Four Issues Your A/P Dept’s Cell Phone Policy Needs to Address
A recent Managing Accounts Payable survey identified the 17 most innovative changes made to accounts payable:

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People & Technology Key to Improved A/P Productivity
In a time when technology is being relied on more and more, people are still a deciding factor in the success or failure of an accounts payable department. This came to light in a recent Managing Accounts Payable subscriber survey, accounts payable professionals were asked to identify the most innovative changes they had made within their departments over the last year. Their answers reveal that while technology issues are indeed the two top leading change agents, people issues—representing the third and fourth most effective changes— when combined, rank up with technology:

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Managing Accounts Payable Accounts Payable Managers’ Forum map0001
1. Getting timely approvals on all invoices
2. Moving the entire staff up the technology ladder

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March, 2000
In This Issue:

Case Study: How to Redesign Your Accounts Payable Department.
17 Ways to Reorganize Your A/P Department & Improve Its Productivity.
New Web Research Tools for Detecting Vendor Fraud.
Here’s What You Should Include on Your A/P Web Page.
Use These Electronic Helpers to Preserve E-Ticket Savings.
A/P Clerks’ Salaries Now Average $23,000.
Accounts Payable Miscellany.
EI&EPI Task Force Asks for Your Help.
Managing Accounts Payable Calendar.
Accounts Payable Managers’ Forum.

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