Accounts Payable News^®

How to Unlock Your Company’s Potential

No matter how big or small an organisation is, or where it’s based in the world, they are largely driven by the same factor – their financial position.  Sound accounting practices and procedures are essential to both daily operations and the achievement of strategic goals.  However, the accounting function itself represents a significant cost to the company and is a key area where greater controls and efficiency can easily translate into increased profitability.

What to Keep – What to Throw Away

In response to the increasing pressures on accounts departments to comply with an ever deeper burden of compliance legislation, it’s all too easy to panic and either blanket record everything, or feel overwhelmed, and miss crucial documentation.  The trick is to know what to keep, and what can safely be discarded.

In the US, the implementation of Sarbanes-Oxley has led some organisations to monitor everything from phone calls, emails and IM.  Although of course it is vital that these are monitored – recording all transactions regardless of their importance is both time consuming and futile and ultimately, like someone on a crash diet, doomed to failure.  Although we don’t yet have a similar act in the UK, accounting procedures are increasingly compliance led – with many feeling that the appearance of a similar act is only a matter of time.

Take Control

All Finance Managers know that internal controls are a necessity to the organisation’s governance, operations and information systems in relation to:

• Reliability and integrity of financial and operational information
• Effectiveness and efficiency of operations.
• Safeguarding of assets.
• Compliance with laws, regulations  and contracts

Performance Metrics – Not Just a Gimmick

When the ever increasing piles of paperwork mount up in your supposedly “paper-free” Accounts Payable department and someone mentions the use of performance metrics, the temptation is to dismiss its usage as a luxury you just don’t have the time for. However, with the inception of automated metric software, their implementation can actually save time if used properly and can raise the game of the Accounts Payable function.