Software – Latest Information

The History of Accounts Payable Audit

In the 1970s, many companies expanded or merged to form complex corporate structures. At the same time, many began to outsource more of their functions than usual, developing a need to process hundreds, sometimes thousands of invoices as well as the normal pay roll functions. To solve this problem, the tradition of regular accounts payable audit was born.

Nowadays, most companies of a certain size rely on outsourced specialist companies to create functional and efficient accounts payable audit and reduce or, ideally, eliminate the revenue loss that always comes with overpaid invoices, duplicate payments, misapplied tax, unclaimed rebates, inaccurate currency conversions, VAT and discount adjustments, and all the other little things that can go wrong when running a large and complex company with a robust financial operating system. Because although a couple of incorrect payments to a contractor or supplier may not seem much on their own, they have an insidious way of adding up sometimes to millions of dollars.

Traditionally, a recovery audit is carried out at regular intervals to correct any miscalculations, errors or even deliberate fraud attempts by contractors, suppliers or staff. These audits are undertaken after payments have been made, and often end up considerably increasing a company’s bottom line. Usually a recovery audit, as well as identifying specific mistakes, will also spot problems in management or process which may be allowing these mistakes to occur. Then, employees are trained and systems changed in an attempt to reduce the mistakes made in compliance and correct payment.

Now, many of these accounts payable suppliers use recovery audit software to carry out a constant and efficient survey of effectiveness throughout the year. Modern recovery audit software comprises a set of tools which can be operated by accounts payable teams to monitor compliance and weed out incorrect payments or duplicate payments. These analyse payment history through web-based on-demand systems which monitor transactions deeply.

With this kind of transaction monitoring, customers are discovering a large number of historical overpayments – which can be recovered, either by the accounts payable company or, if preferred, by the company itself. Patterns can also be revealed which may indicate a problem in processing systems, an inefficient or even fraudulent staff member, or a regularly dishonest contractor.

Drilling down into data electronically removes human error and provides clear and readable evidence of patterns of fault, error or simply systems that are outdated and can be changed to see an increase in bottom line profit. No wonder that so many managers are adopting this new recovery audit software as a key service for their businesses!

Please visit https://www.fiscaltec.com/ for further information about this topic.

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Bacs software has still not been fully adopted

Bacs has been around for 45 years now. Despite this history, and its track record of being speedy, easy and secure, bacs software has not been universally adopted by firms and other organisations. It tends to be the smaller outfits who refuse the longest, for obvious reasons. However, instead of making bacs payments, many of these are still paying their bills with cheques or, in some cases, even with cash. This leads to a number of problems and makes for inefficient and even risky practices.

Times are changing, and now the vast majority of financial transactions occur in the virtual arena. The reasons for this are diverse, but speed and security are repeating ones. It is very simple to transfer money with bacs, and because it includes multiple layers of safety measures it is very secure; should you – against all odds – run into a problem, you will almost certainly be insured and protected from any financial impact, unless the issue is unarguably your fault.

Bacs transfers take a maximum of three working days to happen, but the new FPS (faster payments system) is almost instant, and costs no more. Effectively, when people talk about bacs nowadays, they are using it as a encompassing term for electronic transfers, including FPS.

All of this is important for organisations, even the smaller ones who are holding on to cheques and cash. (Although there was an outcry at the time, quite recently the banks suggested that they would be eradicating cheques within the foreseeable future – suggesting the low regard in which they hold them…) No organisation, large or small, wants to have significant quantities of cash on the premises. Furthermore, cheques are time-consuming to write, require counter-signing, and you have no idea when they will be cashed – which can cause cash-flow headaches.

So, if you haven’t already adopted bacs payments for your organisation, now is a good time. So many other outfits use bacs that it smooths the process of making payments – allowing you to budget more easily, and to give time to other areas of your business that are more important. Everything can be automated, and bacs software can even be integrated with your accounts package, streamlining things further. Bacs is safe, secure, fast, and saves you time and money. At a time when every pound is important, this cannot be a bad thing.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Duplicate payments can silently eat into your company’s profits

Any accounts manager will recognise that things don’t always add up as tidily as they should. It ought to be simple in principle: incomings, outgoings, profit, loss – the columns should balance. When they don’t, you can be almost certain of the reason why: human error. duplicate payments are easy to make when people are disorganised and don’t keep track of invoices. An accounts payable audit is likely to turn up a number of similar mistakes and glitches, highlighting just how dear this can be for a company. Recovery audit software is one way of pinpointing and tracking the discrepancies in your accounts system, gaining back the money you have unnecessarily paid out and stopping the same thing from happening again in the future.

Whilst automated systems are reliable and straightforward, people often don’t work the same way. Duplicate payments can occur when invoices are submitted twice, perhaps mistakenly due to miscommunication, or perhaps because the client has emailed it to two different departments in the illusion that it will get dealt with more quickly. If clients are disorganised, this can be even worse – you could be dealing with a backlog as they try to get up to date, and be expected to sort out the mess of their own accounting system. Then there are the rarer cases of fraud, where people deliberately try to use loopholes in your accounts department. Naturally, you will want to be aware of these, since this represents a deliberate and dishonest attempt to siphon money off from your company – rarer than simple error, but by no means unheard of.

Estimates range wildly about the extent of the fact of duplicate payments and other unnecessary payouts, and naturally it will depend on the scope and size of your firm, as well as how organised and qualified your accounts department is. However, an accounts payable audit on the average business might typically reveal a one percent over-payment – a deceptively small figure which can nevertheless add up to a significant amount of money, especially if a company is very large or perhaps close to the edge to begin with. For a one-off outlay, recovery audit software can avoid such problems occurring again in the future – and help you to recoup any past losses at the same time: a nice bonus that might pay for the investment at a stroke. Put in those terms, there’s no downside to putting that kind of procedure in place.

Please visit http://www.fiscaltechnologies.com/ for further information about this topic.

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Bacs involves a series of important regulations: make sure you are compliant

bacs, or Bankers’ Automated Clearing Services, is a payment scheme that governs payments in a range of transactions in industries all across the United Kingdom. Bacs payments are processed all the time between companies and individuals, and the scheme makes up a huge proportion of wage transactions for employees. As a result, most business payments need to be processed through bacs on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. This can result in clunky and ineffective procedures, which can slow companies up. Part of this is due to the fact that bacs takes three working days to be processed, which can lead to challenges in accounts payable. Often a top quality bacs software solution is in order.

Bacs software providers can customise solutions to the needs of individual businesses. The potential benefits are numerous, and they begin with the saving of costs on payment processing. It is usually integrated with your company’s accounts system, which helps to boost the efficiency of your payment processes. Accounts payable teams have enough to do, without having to chase down duplicate payments or rectify other errors in the payment system. That is why a dependable bacs solution is absolutely necessary if your business is going to stay competitive. The leading high street banks will be able to inform you about this, and will probably also be able to provide recommendations.

Aside from these basic benefits – that is, making life easier for accounts payable teams and saving on payment processes – there are a number of others. For instance, a quality software solution will give you a tight control over your payments, the upshot of which is that you will be able to comply with the legislation that governs bacs payments. The same factor – your optimised level of payment control – can prove to be a factor in minimising your exposure to the risk of fraud. Whatever answer you go for in the end, it is absolutely imperative that it is fully approved by bacs. Otherwise, you might run into all kinds of problems.

Whether your company is small or big, it could potentially benefit from the use of bacs software. The best solutions from top bacs specialists are likely to remove a number of obstacles to the efficiency, and thereby the success, of your company. bacs payments are a reality you have to deal with on a regular basis, and it would be an error to process them in anything but the most effective way possible.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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