Fascination About Automated Accounts Payable Systems

In accounts payable (AP) departments around the world, mistakes are happening day after day. Suppliers are onboarded without proper vetting. Duplicate
payments are made. Fraud occurs in the disbursement process. These mistakes often happen not despite, but because of, the very systems that were designed
and put in place to automate and perfect the AP process. Reliance on automated invoice and payment processes often reduces the number and effectiveness of
process controls.
Best practices can significantly reduce the risk and exposure that come from not having a methodology in place to alert AP professionals to recovery available
from read more duplicates, overpayments, and fraud. Surprisingly, even many of the largest companies in the world don't have these best practices in place.

Best practices include:

Establishing and maintaining a clean vendor master file.
Having more transparent disbursement systems.
Implementing continuous monitoring of vendors and disbursements for potential fraud.

Conducting regular audits on all transactions to identify and recover overpayments due to duplicates, returns, rebates, pricing errors, contract
noncompliance, sales tax errors, and more.


References
Tueffel, H. (2016). Boost the bottom line with accounts payable best practices. Journal Of Accountancy, 222(5), 1-4.

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