Product Description

The accounts payable function has changed radically over the past decade—and this transformation continues.

Today, it's absolutely essential to make sure you’re setting clear, concise department productivity goals using benchmarking data that’s appropriate for your organization.

And to meet those goals, your procedures must reflect the most up to date best practices, including detailed information on the hottest topics in AP such as technology planning, invoice automation, organizational strategies, and the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on accounts payable.

This two-volume 550+ page is your one-stop shop to making your AP department into a world-class operation, one that will satisfy your organization’s needs and put you, as manager, in the limelight.

In it, you'll get concise benchmarking data to help you set productivity goals and control AP costs for this year and for years to come, all based on the survey responses of over 450 AP managers. You’ll learn:

• How to calculate the withholding and prioritize the order of distribution
• What benchmarks to use when setting best practice goals
• The real extent of check fraud by industry and size of company
• How to gauge your staff’s proficiency by using the latest AP productivity statistics
• Standards for number of days to process an invoice and frequency of check runs
• The average, median and best practice cost of processing an invoice
• What it costs to process a vendor payment and a T&E voucher
• Benchmarks for vendor discount policies and use of P-cards
• How automation affects AP costs, error rates and productivity
• And much more

Whether it's handling invoices or staff relations, you’ll also learn how to build a coherent set of best practices that are tailor-made for your AP department.

With checklists of over 500 AP best practices in 14 different categories, you'll get the help you need to:

• Save time and money by streamlining your invoice processing.
• Learn the latest strategies for invoice imaging, electronic invoices, data capture, and workflow.
• Avoid payment fraud via best ways to prepare, print, and distribute checks.
• Clean up your master vendor file to eliminate fraud and duplicate payments.
• Get control of travel & entertainment expenditures with effective policies.
• Discover how organizations are growing their p-card programs while maintaining control.
• Protect your organization from federal and state investigations by staying on top of regulatory issues, including Sarbanes-Oxley.
• Improve your organization’s cash position by implementing new strategies for discounts.
• See how to use proven process improvement strategies, such as benchmarking.
• Determine if shared services, outsourcing, or offshoring is right for your AP department.
• Reduce problems with customers—both internal and external.
• Learn proven ways to deal with staff management issues.
• And much, much more!