|
08.25.08 >>>Benchmark Your AP Operations<<<
How much does it cost AP departments to process an invoice? How many invoices should AP staffers be able to process in a month? What is the average error rate for payments? You will get the answers to these questions--and a lot more—if you take part in our survey. more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
08.14.08 >>> AP Benchmarking Survey Now Open <<<
How much does it cost AP departments to process an invoice? How many invoices should AP staffers be able to process in a month? What is the average error rate for payments? You will get the answers to these questions--and a lot more—if you take part in our AP Benchmarking Survey. We’ll send you the results so you can see how your AP department stacks up against all the others.
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
07.29.08 Shrink Your Vendor File
In an optimal procure-to-pay (P2P) process, purchasing and AP work closely together. One area that can benefit from this collaboration is the master vendor file, and this can produce significant cost savings—especially when you work with purchasing to cut down on the number of vendors.
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
07.15.08 Recovery Audits Snare Big Bucks
Private recovery auditors have retrieved almost $700 million in Medicare overpayments to hospitals and other medical providers, according to the Wall Street Journal. This amount was recovered over about a three-year period as part of a pilot program examining improper payments, most of which involved claims filed in New York, California, and Florida. Under the program, the recovery auditors are paid a percentage of the overpayments they retrieve.
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
05.30.08 Test Your AP IQ: Vendor Data
How familiar are you with AP rules, regulations, and best practices? Here’s a multiple-choice question to test your knowledge: Which of the following does the accounts payable department typically have the most problem getting from a vendor?
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
04.08.08 Nix Punctuation in Vendor File
Periods, commas, slashes, hyphens, ampersands—all of those little marks may seem like nothing. But their significance in a master vendor file can be enormous. These marks are common triggers of duplicate vendor entries. To avoid duplication, it is important to make and enforce a policy for consistent use of punctuation.
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
02.22.08 Test Your AP IQ: Master Vendor File
How familiar are you with AP best practices, rules, and regulations? Here’s a question to test your knowledge: Which of the following not a good practice for the master vendor file?
more...
Comments (1) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
11.06.07 IOMA Launches On-Site Training for Accounts Payable
New York, NY (November 6, 2007)—The Institute of Management & Administration (IOMA) has announced the full roll-out of its on-site training programs to help organizations large and small efficiently meet their management and professional development objectives when it's convenient.
IOMA experts will work one-on-one with organizations to identify and address their specific needs. After agreeing on an organization's objectives, IOMA will pair the organization with one or more IOMA Advisory Services consultants, comprised of the nation's leading payables management authorities.
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
08.28.07 Avoid the “Credit Memo Purge”
Generally, AP should never make a payment off of a vendor statement. Statements often contain invoices that have already been paid. Because of the lag time, the vendor may not have received the check, and the invoice shows up on the statement. If you pay from the statement, you’ll double-pay some invoices.
But that doesn’t mean vendor statements aren’t useful. You should look at them regularly—and even request them periodically. Why? One reason is to avoid a phenomenon called the “credit memo purge,” according to Nat Goodman, APM, MBA, CPA, and one of our senior AP consultants.
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
08.10.07 Test Your AP IQ: Recovery Audit Firms
A recovery audit firm specializes in recovering duplicate payments. As a general rule, what percentage of the amounts recovered does the recovery audit firm retain?
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
08.07.07 Control of Master Vendor File
Our research indicates that AP has principal control of the file in over three-quarters (78%) of the companies surveyed. Nearly one-eighth of respondents (12%) stated that purchasing, not AP, controls the master vendor file in their organizations. Ownership may be shared with purchasing (7%) or another department.
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
07.19.07 Call for Presentations: Advanced AP 2008
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
06.08.07 Test Your AP IQ: Purging the Master Vendor File
How familiar are you with AP best practices, rules, and regulations? Here’s a question to test your knowledge: Most companies purge their master vendor files on a regular basis. What do you think is the most common frequency companies use for doing the purge?
more...
Comments (1) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
04.27.07 Test Your AP IQ: Duplicate Vendors
Having duplicate vendors in your master vendor file can lead to duplicate payments. If your master vendor file hasn’t gone through a cleanup lately, what percentage of the vendors can you expect to be redundant (assuming the file size is 50,000)?
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
03.27.07 New Survey: Master Vendor File Setup
In a recent survey we conducted concerning AP department compensation and operational tasks, we received some responses that may indicate a control problem. When asked about vendor setup and maintenance, 60% of AP support staff are doing the actual work. Much fewer higher-level AP pros are hands-on with this task. For instance, 24% of AP managers actually do vendor setup.
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
02.23.07 Test Your AP IQ: Master Vendor File Size
What is a good rule of thumb to use to determine whether your master vendor file is getting too large?
more...
Comments (2) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
02.02.07 Test Your AP IQ: Vendor Add Forms
more...
Comments (3) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
01.16.07 Top 10 Master Vendor File Best Practices
The master vendor file is the foundation of the accounts payable and procurement systems. Left unchecked, the master vendor file can become bloated with duplicate vendors, inactive vendors, different addresses, and the like. When this happens, all kinds of problems can be triggered, such as fraud, duplicate payments, and headaches from the Internal Revenue Service. Here are the top 10 best practices we recommend for the master vendor file.
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
11.14.06 Access to the Master Vendor File
For internal control reasons, access to the master vendor file should be restricted to avoid duplications by keeping input consistent.
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
08.24.06 When to Purge Inactive Vendors
IOMA’s Master Vendor File Management Survey revealed a wide variety of criteria AP departments use for purging vendors due to inactivity—the intervals range from one year to seven years. more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
09.01.04 Reducing Amount Paid to Duplicate Payment Auditors
Looking to reduce the amount you pay your duplicate payment auditors? Speaking at IOMA’s “Harnessing the Power of e in AP Today” conference, PowerTrak’s Bob Fleishman made some suggestions.
more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
03.01.04 New Vendor Certification, a Flash Survey of the Institute of Internal Auditors.
On the bright side, this survey of 145 participants shows more than 40% of respondents “reviewing the master file for accuracy” annually (31.9%) or more than annually (12.5%). more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
02.01.04 Handling Inactive Vendors in the Master Vendor File
“In our system, JD Edwards, the address book holds all of the vendors for both purchasing’s use and accounts payable’s,” writes one manager. “These vendors have a search type of V [a code in the JD Edwards system]. We are currently trying to establish procedures for dealing with inactive vendors. A question has come up as to placing the word ‘inactive’ either in front of the vendor name or after to alert requisitioners." more...
Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Email to a Colleague | Add to Favorites
|
|
|
