Accounts payable better practices – for the 21st century

This white paper is based on better practices emerging from an in-depth ten year study of accounting functions and interaction with over 2,000 accounts payable officers.  Accountants and accounts payable staff will benefit from acquiring this whitepaper. This paper points out how the accounts payable (AP) team is the centre of the finance team and timely and accurate information cannot be delivered without the AP team working with 21st century better practices and technologies.

This paper is to be read by all accounts payable staff together with an accountant who would be best positioned to support them with better practice changes. This paper covers over 50 better practices and the content includes:

implementing 21st century accounts payable technology and techniques

reducing up to 60% of your volume from the AP ledger

the benefits of the purchase card and recipient-created invoices

moving towards a paperless AP function (electronic purchase orders, scanning etc)

streamlining payments – how to throw away the cheque book, web based remittances etc

working more efficiently and effectively with suppliers and budget-holders

how to get your budget holders to comply to AP procedures

ways to improve the day to day A/P administration (handling purchase orders, purchase invoices, etc.)

A/P staff issues (recruitment, training, increasing team morale)

how to cut-off A/P promptly so month end reports can be prepared by day 3 or less

Why you should buy this whitepaper:

• You haven’t the time to disseminate all the information from the better practices adopted by leading AP Teams. I have been working on this over the last 15 years on your behalf.
• Easy to use templates – which can be in use immediately.
• Make a lasting impression with the CFO by revolutionizing AP processes significantly reducing transaction volumes and at the same time cost per AP transaction.
• Improve the profile and job satisfaction of AP staff.

Table of Contents:

1.Introduction

2.The impact of better practices on the accounts payable workload

3.Administration improvements

4.Cut-off improvements

5.Staffing improvements

6.Accounts payable re-engineering improvements

7.Payment improvements

8.Relationship with budget holders improvements

9.Relationship with suppliers improvements

10.Systems improvements

11.Benefits of quick monthly reporting to management and the Finance team

12.Case study one Johnson & Johnson vision products USA

13.The common bottlenecks at month-end for the AP team and techniques to get around them

14.Workshop change with month-end routines in the Accounting team

15.Sources of information

16.Presenter biography

17.Appendix 1 Checklist of the 50+ ways to improve your accounts payable systems & procedures

18.Appendix 2 Checklist of implementation steps to reduce month-end reporting time frames