It’s November. Do you know where your W-9's and W-8's are? It is time to prepare for 1099 season. Hopefully, you know which of your suppliers are subject to reporting. Do you have verified tax identification numbers for them all? Remember that 1099's with Box 7 nonemployee compensation reporting are due January 31st! Furthermore, the automatic 30-day extension is gone this reporting season so don’t count on easily getting extra time to complete your 1099's. Ideally, you have implemented best practices that entail getting the requisite W-9 or W-8 prior to adding a new supplier to the vendor master file. If not, you at least require the supplier to submit the appropriate W form — or at the very least give you their tax ID number — before you issue them payment, right? Otherwise, you must withhold taxes from the payments. If you fail to withhold, it is going to cost you. The IRS has increased penalties in recent years and failing to comply with requirements has gotten expensive! With reporting around the corner, it’s high time to determine if you are missing any supplier TINs and get them, and — to avoid B-notices — run them through IRS TIN matching for verification. If...

14 November, 2017

If you do not have a portal to enable self-service by your vendors, you should. Why? Vendor self-service is valuable in regard to supplier relations as well as in accounts payables’ cost to provide customer service to both your internal and external customers. Consider the following three ways vendor self-service is important. First, in what Forrester has dubbed the age of the customer, your customers expect it. That is, they expect ease in doing business — and this includes AP’s customers. The digital revolution has changed the way people transact and interact. The assumption is that information is readily available and easy to get. This notion is reinforced by daily experiences from shopping to banking from our mobile devices. Those consumer experiences bleed over into business expectations: “If I can handle all my personal accounts easily myself, why can’t I handle our business accounts that way?” What’s more, while technology has been revolutionizing the way things are done, generational demographics have been shifting as well, accelerating certain expectations in the workforce. According to Pew Research, in 2015 Millennials are now the largest generation in the work force, with 53.5 million, versus the Gen-Xer’s 52.7 million, and the Baby boomers’ 44.6 million. The generation...

01 November, 2017

In any organization, accounts payable touches a wide range of stakeholders, and therefore has a tremendous though often under-recognized impact. The various stakeholders are AP’s “customers” and AP’s service to them and how they perceive it are important. How so? The job of AP customer service is to respond appropriately to resolve a customer’s issue. But the job of AP customer service is not simply to answer a particular question. It is to find and solve underlying problems, build strong supplier relations, and maintain a great reputation on behalf of the organization. Some AP customer service calls are simply informational — when will we get paid? Others are more challenging but can lead to opportunities to improve your procure-to-pay process. Customer service calls can point to process breakdowns that need correction. Ideally, AP does not just solve the immediate concern but looks at the bigger picture, finds underlying causes and fixes them. This approach not only resolves one call but it eliminates further calls while strengthening the supplier relationship. But it’s hard to do when facing a heavy volume of contacts. AP customer service also impacts supplier relations, positively or negatively. In its customer service interactions, AP is the face of the organization...

17 October, 2017

Customer service is an increasingly consequential aspect of accounts payable. And according to a Financial Operations Network survey, most AP departments — 88 percent — rated their own customer service as either good or excellent. Good news? Not so fast. Only one in five had ever asked their internal customers and just one in ten actually surveyed their suppliers for feedback on their service. In any area of consequence it is important to know how well your team is actually performing. Sure, self-assessment is important and common performance metrics will be a major indicator. But there’s more to look at, and asking your customers how you are doing provides a “reality check” you won’t get otherwise! Areas to Measure (You May Be Part Way There Already) Metrics are a tool to help you understand where you stand currently and identify issues you need to address. Don’t think of them as “one more thing” you ought to be doing, but as a handy utensil to make it easier for you to do what you want to get done. Metrics will tell you where you are currently and help you identify and prioritize issues; they are useful in goal setting, and can be used...

05 October, 2017

How much does it cost your organization to answer a vendor invoice status inquiry? Don’t feel badly if you don’t have the answer at your fingertips. According to a recent survey by Financial Operations Networks and InvoiceInfo, only 1 out of 10 respondents track AP customer service metrics, making the cost to communicate with vendors the most overlooked AP activity metric. But these costs can really add up as vendors become more cash-flow sensitive. Interestingly, most cost-per-invoice calculations don’t get granular enough to break out the cost of these activities. How much is at stake? Just take payment status inquiries, for example. Statistics show vendor inquiries are made on 3% to 15% of the invoices a company receives and each inquiry takes 3 to 20 minutes to resolve. Of greater concern is that vendor communication activities are increasing. Today’s vendors email and call about invoice payment status with increasing frequency, putting additional strains on already scarce AP resources. Vendor questions can include “Have you received our invoice?” or “Has our invoice been approved?” or “Has our invoice been paid?” The good news is, InvoiceInfo has developed a simple, convenient, effective and easy-to-use tool to track AP customer service costs. The AP...

05 October, 2017

You might be asking yourself what green beans and ice cream have to do with accounts payable customer service. This article is a review of Bill Simms book “Green Beans & Ice Cream: The Remarkable Power of Positive Reinforcement,” where he describes his childhood dinner experiences in the beginning of the book. His mother would feed him green beans and they were his worse nightmare. “Green. Slimy. Stringy.” As he says, “by the time I was a four-year-old kid, I had already sampled green beans and concluded they weren’t for me. The strings might as well have been wood chips, the way they caught in my throat as I tried to get them down. Mom was my boss, and I was her newest employee. We had a real labor/management crisis going on. She begged, cajoled and pleaded. But I was determined not to eat those green beans. So I crossed my arms, frowned and pouted, figuring she’d give up and forget about green beans, as she always had in the past.” “But this time, Mom had a secret weapon. Now, there was something else on the table besides that dreaded green scourge. You guessed it. Ice cream! This sheer stroke of...

05 October, 2017

A best practice for accounts payable customer service is to transfer vendor invoice and payment inquiries to a supplier self-service portal where vendors can get the answers themselves — quickly and easily. According to a recent AP Customer Service Survey conducted by Financial Operations Networks and InvoiceInfo, respondents indicated that they receive inquiries from vendors and internal colleagues about payment and approval of invoices. But surprisingly, respondents said that the most important questions asked are questions about which invoices are covered on a payment and why an invoice was short paid. For those that chose “Other,” they stated that statement reconciliation and departments inquiring about what remains on a contract or blanket purchase order to spend are common questions. Questions like these and others can easily be answered with a vendor self-service portal, which helps to improve staff productivity and reduce cost. Who Is Using a Self-Service Option? According to the survey, of those participating, on average only 17.5% responded that they currently have a vendor self-service portal, while 82.5% do not. For participant companies with revenue greater than $1 billion, 46.9% of respondents have a portal, which is an increase of 16.9% from last year’s survey. So it appears that...

05 October, 2017

One of your top priorities is your customer’s satisfaction with the services you provide. In accounts payable, dissatisfied customers increase cost, sometimes dramatically. Continually seek to understand what is important to your customers. Ask them, and then measure their satisfaction. No matter who created the problem (and most of the time it’s not AP!), it is your job to address the problem, and often to solve or to help solve the problem. Following are some AP customer service best practices: [unordered_list style="circle"] Think of the “Golden Rule” when dealing with customers — “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Treat all your customers as you would like to be treated. Ask each member of your staff to think about how they feel as a customer. What service have they had that they thought was exceptional? What can be learned from that service to become better at serving your customers? Open and honest communication is the single most important factor in establishing credibility. Delivering great customer service goes a long way in forming the customer’s opinion about “being easy to do business with.” Gaining a reputation for being “easy to do business with” goes a long way in great customer relations...

05 October, 2017

Like many other business processes, vendor onboarding is subject to an organization’s internal controls, compliance with regulations imposed by various government agencies, demands for productivity and expectations of minimum levels of customer service. Well thought-out and effectively managed vendor onboarding programs deliver high quality in each of these areas. Vendor onboarding is key to every successful vendor management program. But it can be complex, tedious, and labor intensive, with medium- and large-size companies managing thousands of vendors and the very largest managing hundreds of thousands. Onboarding includes processes for obtaining correct, complete and verified vendor information and for entering that information into systems for accounting and purchasing. The onboarding processes can be both manual and automated. Internal Controls Subject to the organization’s internal controls, accounts payable is the last control point before cash leaves the company. Depending on your industry, 30%-70% of all the cash that comes into a company goes back out through accounts payable. Appropriate and effective controls for onboarding include segregation of duties to help protect against vendor fraud, payment fraud and employee fraud. Internal control policies for onboarding also help insure vendor, invoice and pricing legitimacy as well as payment accuracy and contract compliance. Payment accuracy protects against paying...

05 October, 2017

Accounts payable works closely with all departments in the organization, with the company’s vital suppliers and controls all expenses within a company. But, AP is often considered a back-office overhead expense and often does not get the recognition and respect it deserves. Accounts payable operations can recognize accounts payable customer service during Accounts Payable Recognition Week which is October 9-13, 2017. These first few weeks in October are a great time to celebrate your accomplishments and let your team know that they are appreciated. Celebrating AP Recognition Week is a great way to raise companywide awareness of the importance of AP; thank other departments for their support; remind your customers of your commitment to customer satisfaction; reward frontline customer service reps and boost AP staff morale and teamwork. 11 Ways to Celebrate Recognize the individuals and departments that support accounts payable. Thank your internal customers and vendors and remind them about your commitment to customer service. Thank your customer service team by sending personally signed thank you cards to their homes. Answer your phones, Thank you for calling during AP Appreciation Week. How may I help you? Be prepared to explain the week and how it supports your mission of service excellence. Host theme days with coordinated activities...

05 October, 2017