Accounts Payable News^®

Today's global marketplace demands that businesses have secure and efficient services to handle its payments. Payments are an integral part of everyday life for a good deal of the world’s population. They support all types of commercial and economic activity and affect everyone - employers, employees and consumers alike.

We all have an expectation that the payments we make will be secure, reliable and ultimately, successful. But beyond those basic expectations, most businesses and commercial organisations are both unaware and don’t have the time, to consider what is happening behind the scenes.  However, this attitude could have grave implications for the efficiency of your AP department.

You don't have many dealings with foreign currency - so why should you be concerned with exchange rate fluctuations?   The answer is, that in our increasingly global economy, you're likely to be wrong.

No matter how isolated your organisation seems to be from large scale foreign transactions, it's likely that at some level it will be affected.  In some large organisations where exposure to the threat of currency fluctuations is a relatively new phenomena - many AP departments simply hand over the responsibility to their central banking partners.  In many cases their bank will be acting with their own best interests at heart, and not those of their client.  This situation is compounded further when AP departments have a rigid payment system whereby invoices must be paid on or by a certain date regardless of what may be happening in the markets.