Happy New Year everyone! Tis the season to come up with New Year’s resolutions. So it got me thinking about what many accounts payable organizations are doing this coming year. One thing is for sure, there is a lot happing in accounts payable this year. See how many are on your list:
- Procurement Card Utilization. No accounts payable organization likes paying a manual invoice that is $1.76. This is a great way to reduce the number of small dollar invoices that every A/P organization has to pay. Many companies have either already implemented a procurement card, also known as pcard, solution or are going to make the leap to using procurement cards.
- Invoice Imaging. No one likes paper. Imaging is a great way to clean-up your accounts payable processors desks, reduce physical storage needs, and be able to look up an invoice in seconds versus the time it takes to trudge to the file room. Some organizations are doing post data entry imaging, while others are doing front end imaging and entering invoices directly off the image. Either way, imaging is a must have for any A/P organization.
- ACH payments. Many companies are moving away from checks and moving to electronic payments. I don’t think we can ever get 100% away from checks, but I believe ACH payments are the way to go.
- Workflow implementation. With workflow implementation accounts payable will no longer have to attempt to read that illegible signature approving an invoice. No more reviewing manual procedures to determine if someone has gone over the approval limit. Workflow streamlines the approval process to ensure approval matrices are followed.
- Electronic Invoicing (aka e-invoicing). No one likes entering invoices manually. If you can upload 100,000 invoices versus entering them manually, then I say do it. Fortunately, there are LOTS of different ways to implement electronic invoicing. Some organizations are implementing the old electronic standard – EDI. Some organizations are purchasing third party products such as Xign, OB10, etc. Other organizations are developing their own web based portal to allow their supplier to upload their activity. There is no shortage on ways to process invoices electronically and they all aid in streamlining your A/P organization.
- Business Process Review. Everyone’s business processes are being streamlined. During the past year there have been lots of company acquisitions and divestures. All of these business changes have led to the existence of a multitude of different business processes. By rationalizing these business processes, companies are able to streamline and implement the most effective and efficient business processes they can.
- Systems Consolidation. Many organizations find themselves supporting multiple A/P systems. In an effort to gain greater control and efficiency, we are seeing many companies move to consolidate their systems into one central system.
- Outsourcing. This is a word that many A/P organizations do not like. But the reality is that many companies have either moved to an outsourcing model or are going to.
- Share Service Center. Over the next year, several of our clients will begin building shared service centers to drive efficiencies. This was a major focus and hot topic many years back that seems to be back in the forefront, for good reason.
- Vendor Master File Clean-up. Every time I perform training sessions at conferences or tradeshows, I ask the question “How many people have duplicate vendors master file records in their A/P system?” And, as always, everyone raises their hand. Every A/P system is designed under the assumption that there is only one vendor master file record for each supplier. Important system controls, such as the identification of duplicate payments, are contingent upon a single vendor master record per supplier.
- Recovery Audit. No one wants to believe that duplicate payments, overpayments, and payments to wrong suppliers happen. But they do. We are finding that companies who typically perform an annual audit are implementing procedures to perform recurring recovery audits and organizations that do not even typically perform, at a minimum, an annual audit are making this year the year they audit. No one necessarily likes audits, but you will look like, and be, a hero if you can add money to your company’s bottom line.
As you can see, Accounts Payable is a busy place. Technology Insight can help you with many of these projects for the coming year. Let us know if there is anything we can help you with. And if I have forgotten anything that’s on your radar this year, please reply below. I would love to hear what you are working on.
Hope everyone has a good new year ahead of them.
Karl