How to reduce errors in your accounts payable audit

The accounts payable audit is a necessary procedure in most workplaces.  However skilled and careful accounts teams are, duplicate payments and other errors are bound to occur, and these can end up costing a huge amount of money. Many businesses use professional recovery auditors, but these often charge very high fees.  If it is possible to empower your own in-house Accounts Payable teams to deal with the recovery auditing, you may be able to save money and improve internal processes.  This can now be achieved thanks to recovery audit software.

The software finds duplicate payments, invoicing errors, compliance issues and supplier fraud.  Because it can be used by Accounts Payable teams, it not only increases control but also improves processes, thus preventing future errors from happening.  Using a combination of search algorithms and pattern matching technology, the software provides a detailed report of potential duplicate payments and errors that may have been made.  The benefits of using this technology are widespread.

The software allows you to pre-process your upcoming payments, so that you should never have to pay a duplicate invoice again.  You can audit all your past payment data in one easy step, and any money recouped through recovery will go straight to your bottom line, increasing your profit.  Significantly, the software shows you the reason for each duplicate, enabling you to improve your processes and prevent it from happening in the future.  It is often a good thing to regain control of your accounts payable audit process – it may be satisfying to see an outside team of experts come in and oversee the process, but the knowledge and overview that can be achieved from conducting this process in-house is invaluable.

Furthermore, surprisingly little training is needed to use the software.  Anyone in the Accounts Payable team can use it, and there is no need for any auditing qualifications.  There are therefore no retraining fees.  Indeed installation and ownership also incur fairly little by way of cost.  Training and installation is very quick, and designed to work immediately.  Free online training is provided annually to ensure that ownership costs are as low as possible.

Recovery audit software really can revolutionise the way you conduct your accounts payable audit.  The process of checking for duplicate payments and other errors can tell you a lot about how the department works and how it can improve, so surely it makes perfect sense to conduct this process using your own existing team.

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

http://www.fiscaltechnologies.com/

4da7efcc851ed

Powerpoint design – a key tool in the business world

I had been doing sales presentations for a long time when my boss took me to one side and started to question why my performance was not as strong as the rest of the team’s.  He asked me to give him one of my standard Powerpoint presentations, to give him a better idea of what I was doing in my meetings.  He wasn’t totally unimpressed by my efforts, but he thought that my use of powerpoint design could do with being updated.  I hadn’t been on a course for a while and had been concentrating on the content of my presentations at the expense of the style, which is more important than I realised.

My boss sent me on a brief course which I found really useful.  It really made me aware of all the tools in the program that enable you to really make your presentation into a multimedia experience that is less at risk of boring the audience to tears.  I found it particularly useful thinking a bit more in depth about the visual element of my presentation.  I had always included pictures, but the course highlighted how carefully these need to be considered.  Rather than picking a vaguely appropriate picture to go with a statistic, it is more effective to use a pie chart or bar graph that properly reinforces the statistic.

The course also reminded me that, while Powerpoint design does allow for very technical and detailed slides, simplicity remains key.  As the audience only sees each slide for a number of seconds, a hectic page is unlikely to make an impression and convey all the information on it.  The classic rule that audiences can take in three points at a time is worth remembering, and extra elements such as video content should be seen in context of this.  I was glad that the team at the training course also worked with me on my existing presentations, looking at how I could improve the effectiveness of the message I wanted to get across.  General advice is always useful, but I really felt that I got value for money when I was able to see how much better my new presentation was than the one I would traditionally give.

When I got back to the office I was actually quite excited about showing my boss my new Powerpoint presentations!  He agreed with me that they did a much better job at getting my point across, and were more interesting as well.  My next sales presentations went quite well, as I was much more confident about my new presentations, I think this improved my confidence and therefore my presentation style.  A bit of powerpoint design training certainly went a long way.

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

New Homepage 2019

4d2372ea01ee5

How contractor umbrella services can handle your admin needs

Working as a contractor can be difficult at times.  Some contractors who work on this basis find that the busy schedule of a contractor leaves little time to handle the administrative tasks that come with it.  If this sounds like you, working with a contractor umbrella may be the best option for you, giving you security and the peace of mind of knowing that your payments are in order.  In addition, you may want to consider a CIS payroll service, which enables you to receive your payments in the easiest way possible.  Payroll services like these are ideal because they are specifically designed for established contractors, sub-contractors, sole traders and partnerships.

What is usually referred to as CIS stands simply for the Construction Industry Scheme.  It generally applies to contractors and subcontractors employed in mainstream construction work.  Essentially what happens is, under the scheme a separate company takes on the role of the contractor by fulfilling all the administrative tasks associated with the job.  HM Revenue and Customs are behind the scheme, and those who wish to sign up must first visit the HM Revenue and Customs website in order to be given a Unique Taxpayer Reference Number, without which you cannot participate in the scheme. There is no long term commitment involved in signing up; while some users need a contractor umbrella for a few weeks, others will use their services for a number of years.

Once you have your Unique Taxpayer Reference number, you will be identifiable on the revenue and customs system.  The next steps are to give the number, as well as your name and National Insurance number, to the company you want to register with.  The tax rate on those with a UTR is 20%, but 30% for those without it.  Finding work and negotiating rates is still up to the individual contractor, as is the end-of-year expenses list.  By filling in a list at the end of the year of all the expenses incurred throughout the year, you can offset these against your tax rate.

Those working in the construction industry may wish to join a contractor umbrella for a number of reasons.  For many, the simple time-saving element of being on the CIS payroll makes it worth signing up. If you don’t have to go through paperwork to make sure you get paid, you might be able to fit in a trip to the park with the children, or another pint at the pub.  Payroll services are there for you to make the most of – it’s up to you to go ahead and do it.

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

http://www.liquidfriday.co.uk/

4d237e82dd030

Bacs enables accounts departments to run more efficiently

bacs payments have been around for a long time and bacs software has become a central part of the process of transferring money between accounts. Bacs stands for Bankers’ Automated Clearing Services, although this full name is little used now. The acronym, like the Bacs process, is much more convenient. The Bankers’ Automated Clearing Service was conceived and developed in the United Kingdom in the late 1960s by a man called Denis Gladwell. Since then it has proved hugely popular as a method of making payments and managing accounts both with companies and with the wider public.

One of the main benefits of using Bacs is that there is much less paper to worry about and to keep track of when you are attempting to transfer money between bank accounts. It is efficient and simple. These attributes have made it an extremely convenient means of settling invoices, paying salaries and paying the other various expenses that are a normal part of business life. It has also greatly reduced the need to store large sums of cash to meet future expenses claims and has also greatly reduced the amount of time that a company’s staff have to spend tracking down and storing the paper documents required to carry-out their transactions at the bank. This makes for a much happier and more productive workforce, because people are able to get on with other more interesting tasks to develop and improve the business.

Nowadays, many people in accounts departments make relatively few trips to banks and the same is increasingly true for individual customers. A significant proportion of banking these days is done online. Using your knowledge of key details of your account (such as the account number and the sort code) and remembering passwords and security information enables people to conduct their banking business over the internet. This means that they are able to access their account information twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week from the comfort of their favourite armchair in their living room if they so wish. This means that bacs payments can now be planned and arranged much more easily. It should, however, be remembered that the bacs system does not make payments instantly, but normally takes three working days.

Bacs payments were an excellent invention and bacs software enables these transactions to be processed smoothly and securely. bacs may one day be superseded by another invention, but members of accounts and finance departments will always be grateful to Denis Gladwell.

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

http://www.bottomline.co.uk/

4d235ee253af1

Invoice processing for straightforward book keeping

Sometimes in business it can feel like you are swamped with document management paperwork. It can get to the level where it seems as though paperwork is the main activity of the company, rather than playing a secondary role to the business’s main lines of operation. Of course, many people have got so acclimatised to this that they maybe do not even see the need to revolutionise their document processing. This can be the result of having fallen into a comfort zone, or, perhaps, having a tendency to desire to oversee everything; essentially a tendency to micro manage, which can end up holding your business back and result in a reduced level of competiveness. However, invoice processing and similar operations can be revolutionised, making your company more dynamic, efficient and competitive.

With automated document managing, costs are reduced in the first place by the elementary matter of reduced stationary costs. And this type of expenditure, in companies beyond a certain size, can add up considerably over the course of, say, a year. But this is only the beginning of the implications that revolutionised document processing can have for the improvement of your company.

Reduced paperwork means not only less paper related costs, but lower costs in terms of the working hours of your staff. After all, if there is paper to be filled in, an employee obviously has to fill it in, and this takes time. As the often cited saying goes, time is money. It is true, too, in the sense that the time your staff spend on processing this paperwork could be spent on more productive activities, thereby increasing the productivity of your company. But, as we all know, the paperwork needs to be done come what may, so until your company adopts an automated system for invoice processing, the time of your employees will always be eaten up by these demands.

Another way in which automated document management can benefit your business is by improving your relations with both clients and suppliers, and in the end boosting you company’s image as an efficient and dynamic force. It may be difficult to see how automated document processing can achieve this. Human paperwork, let’s be frank, is slow when compared to that of a computer. When computer software is assigned to, say, invoice processing, invoices are then processed in an instant, and this, from the point of view of a client or of a supplier, is impressive.

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

http://www.bottomline.co.uk/

4cb4f04a13c97

Business writing courses enhance your chances of finding success

In the post credit crunch world of dwindling employment figures across the public and private sectors, the self-employed career decision is looking like an increasingly viable option to an ever rising cross section of people from all spheres of society. In this environment, it is thus vital that effective writing training allows for those seeking investment to get their messages across in the most concise manner possible. In this context, it would be foolish to ignore the advantages that business writing courses are able to bestow upon creative and enterprising individuals seeking to enhance their skills and marketability through well-honed business proposal writing. The understanding that a skilfully developed grasp of these crucial areas can provide is certainly not to be underestimated with regards the ideas described.

Accordingly, those seeking a competitive advantage with respect to their potential rivals would do well to consider the nature of effective writing training and its further applications outside of the literary or academic spheres. Good writing training plays a essential role in determining the decisions of external investors, who themselves are often short of resources and facing the challenge of making wise decisions using all of the powers of investigation available to them. These courses allow the entrepreneur to fully avail him or herself of the tools that enable the individual to recognise and to harness this fact, rather than to regard it simply as an unavoidable but inevitable reality that must somehow be circumvented if one is to succeed. Business proposal work, contrary to common perception, has the potential to straddle the gap between the literary arts, and the sciences, with the overall effect of enhancing the saleability of one’s business or product.

Business proposal writing is the key to achieving the potential in your commercial endeavour, then. The tools with which this can be most efficiently achieved can be unlocked through astute employment of business writing courses and, more generally, by reference to effective writing training. Widespread acknowledgement in both practice and academia of the centrality of communication in effective business practice confirms this.

In seeking to avail oneself of the tenets underpinning business proposal writing, one should consider the multitude of business writing courses that are currently positioning themselves within the market with an ever-increasing frequency, taking into account pricing, stated aims, professional accreditation an prior experience, and the level of effective writing training that is proffered by the staff at all levels.

Please click http://www.drewrys.com/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.drewrys.com/

Duplicate payments are a threat to the profits of big businesses

The larger a business grows, the more significant a role its accounts payable audit department will have. A certain percentage of invoice payments, estimated by Fiscal Technologies to be between 0.5 per cent and 0.1 per cent, are, in fact, duplicate payments. Of course, it is very difficult to say exactly how much of a loss this constitutes for the company, since each invoice payment is for a certain amount. So, if you are lucky, a duplicate might occur for a small payment, or if you are not so lucky, a much larger payment will be duplicated. But, statistically speaking, it likely that 0.1 per cent of invoice expenditure will be copied unnecessarily. Recovery audit software is a way of recuperating the losses incurred by these duplications.

How do duplicate payments occur? Well, there is a multitude of ways in which this problem may arise. Commonly it stems from human error that consequently affects either the supplier’s or the in-house data entry system. Generally speaking, an invoice entry will require around twelve different fields to be filled in by a member of a data entry team, such as an invoice number, a quantity of supplies, a supplier number, a date, and a purchase order number.

The cost of recovery can be surprisingly high; independent recovery auditors may charge a huge commission – often in the region of fifty per cent – of the payments that they successfully recover for you. And that, of course, does not account for those that they fail to identify. With recovery audit software your accounts payable team can run audits daily, or weekly, in order to maximise your chances of paying no more than the right amounts.

A solution to this problem is increasingly urgent in uncertain, and challenging, economic times. Why? It is not only – or primarily – because the pressure increases on your own business to ‘do more with less’, as they say, and to cut waste and leakage from your expenditure. This is, of course, true, though, and the longer an organisation goes without an effective recovery solution, the older duplicate payments become, and the costlier it becomes to recover them. The main reason for the urgency is the range of factors in the economic climate that cannot be controlled. Again, the longer a payment goes unrecovered, the greater the risk becomes that suppliers relevant to the payments may go out of business. accounts payable audit teams are advised to make use of recovery audit software to safeguard companies against these specific dangers.

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

http://www.fiscaltechnologies.com/