Managing Accounts Payable

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May 2005 Table of Contents [ toggle snippets ]

• MAP May 2005 (full PDF issue)
• How Reuters AP Director Streamlined the Invoice-to-Pay Process;
  Expert Reveals Best Internal Controls for Vendor Information;
  AP in 2010: Career Advice From Four AP Execs;
  New Sales & Use Tax Study Reveals Skyrocketing Rate Changes;
  Sarbanes-Oxley Toolkit: AP Recordkeeping Requirements to Ensure Compliance;
  Case Study: Dissecting a Fraud That Should Never Have Happened;
  Accounts Payable Calendar (May 2005);
  News Briefs (May 2005);
  Accounts Payable Managers’ Forum (May 2005)
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• How Reuters AP Director Streamlined the Invoice-to-Pay Process
• When J. Kelly Trip took over the accounts payable function at Reuters, getting an invoice paid took 57 days. As you might imagine, this situation was intolerable, inefficient, and caused problems with suppliers. Tripp was charged with turning the situation around quickly. What follows is a look at what he did, as well as an analysis of how others might use a similar process. He spoke about this at both IOMA’s Advanced AP Institute and RECAP’s Enhancing Accounts Payable conference.
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• Expert Reveals Best Internal Controls for Vendor Information
• When the topic of internal controls in accounts payable is raised, vendor records are not necessarily what most people think of first. However, maintaining vendor data is an important issue that needs to be approached with care, regardless of whether a company is publicly or privately held.
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• AP in 2010: Career Advice From Four AP Execs
• As most readers are quite aware, the accounts payable profession is changing rapidly. Being successful in the future may require very different skills than in the past. What exactly are those skills? At the recent Advanced AP Institute, a panel comprised of four successful accounts payable executives and moderated by the editor of this newsletter focused on what the profession would look like five years from now and how best to get there. Hewlett-Packard’s David Hay, BMHC’s Pam Miller, Telus Communications’ Gail Trann, and the Gap’s Debbie Vander Bogart shared their insights on what accounts payable professionals can do to prepare themselves for that exciting new world.
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• New Sales & Use Tax Study Reveals Skyrocketing Rate Changes
• If you had to pick the one area in accounts payable that changes most frequently, it would have to be sales and use tax. For example, in 2004 there were 764 sales tax rate changes. Vertex has just released its Sales Tax Report, and the findings are telling. It demonstrates the reasoning behind the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Project (SSTP). See the accompanying box for a description of this project. The report also contained a summary of the sales and use tax changes that occurred in 2004.
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• Sarbanes-Oxley Toolkit: AP Recordkeeping Requirements to Ensure Compliance
• For the most part, accounts payable professionals consider themselves lucky if they get the company’s invoices paid in a timely manner. Some give little thought to how and where those items are recorded in the general ledger. Thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley, getting the bills paid on time is no longer adequate. Items must be recorded in a timely manner to the correct accounts. Otherwise, budgets and financial statements may end up with incorrect information on them. Here are some of the things that must be done when recording payment information if the company wants to be in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley:
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• Accounts Payable Calendar (May 2005)
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• News Briefs (May 2005)
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• Common T&E Practices That Could Get Your Firm Into Trouble
• T&E is one of those no-win areas for accounts payable. If you do it right, no one says a word (and a few people might even complain), but if you do it wrong, then a whole mess of trouble could land in your lap. Before we get started identifying the tactics that are likely to cause problems, let’s get one thing straight: The reason most of these practices exist is not that accounts payable is stupid or lax or doesn’t know any better; it’s that their attempts to change these shoddy practices are rebuffed. Hint to accounts payable: Don’t forget to wield the Sarbanes-Oxley stick if that will work in your organization. Here are some T&E practices that should be avoided.
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• Accounts Payable Manager' Forum (May 2005)
• Reducing A/P’s workload by working smarter. Problem: Many accounts payable departments find themselves overwhelmed by the amount of transactional processing that goes through the department. Particularly irksome are those small POs and low-dollar invoices.
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• Case Study: Dissecting a Fraud That Should Never Have Happened
• Once again, complete disregard for even the most basic accounts payable best practices has caused an institution severe embarrassment and financial losses. The case under discussion is the almost $12 million five-year fraud in the Roslyn school district. Roslyn, a wealthy suburb of New York City, is located on Long Island. Here’s a look at what went on and the practices that should have been used but weren’t.
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