Accounts payable audit is smart financial sense

How much oversight do you really have over your accounts? You might have a good idea of what is coming in and going out every week, but what do you know of the detail? The fact is that it would be impossibly time-consuming to have every payment you make or receive compared against invoices, statements and other paperwork. That’s why duplicate payments, fraud and other errors can cost businesses so much. The more transactions you make, the more money you are likely to be wasting due to payments that are unnecessary. An accounts payable audit helps you to pinpoint where the leaks are in your system, throwing up warning signals when it seems like you have paid customers or suppliers when you shouldn’t have done. Recovery audit software allows you to claw back what you have lost over time.

Often the problem will be innocent enough. The average invoice might have something like twelve fields of data in it. Fill out or copy one of these incorrectly and the result could be an inaccurate payment – perhaps too much, perhaps too little, perhaps something that has been paid before. The mistake could have happened at your end or when the invoice was created. However, in some cases it’s more sinister than this. Unscrupulous suppliers might double-send an invoice, knowing that you don’t have the systems in place to catch such events. The amount might be familiar, and so it goes through the accounts without a second thought.

Duplicate payments and other forms of overpayment can total a significant fraction of a company’s turnover. If you engage in large volumes of small transactions, then even a small proportion of these will start to make a hole in your profit margin – and could mean the difference between sinking and staying afloat. Carrying out an accounts payable audit will often pay for itself the first time you do it. However, you should use recovery audit software as soon as possible, because the longer you leave it the lower the chances of reclaiming your money. Companies go out of business, and individuals die or move away. If this has happened then realistically there is little chance of being compensated. Perhaps more importantly, you need to know what is going wrong at the moment – it won’t just be past mistakes. There may be instances of ongoing fraud you need to protect yourself against, or cases where repeated problems occur month after month, and cost you more and more as you go on.

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

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Recovery audit software protecting company assets

Mistakes are rarely, or maybe never possible to eradicate entirely. There are always things that with hindsight we would have done in a different way, a turn of events that we would rather reverse. And luckily, mistakes that happen in genuine error where it seems fate has conspired against someone are usually quickly forgiven. There are instances, however, where errors are less easily glossed over. Take any instances involving our finances – a sudden loss of money, a mislaid or unpaid sum will provoke bad feeling, above all in these times of austerity where many people feel an extra urgent need to safeguard their assets. For those in business, accounts payable audit systems can help errors be avoided. When the books don’t add up, recovery audit software can rescue an unwelcome situation from getting out of check, while also identifying any duplicate payments effected. The last of these mistakes boils down to throwing money down the drain! A neglectful act at any time, especially in the current economic climate.

Even medium-sized businesses should avoid trusting a single person with the enormous responsibility of managing their accounts using excel spreadsheets, notepaper or a calculator. The margin for human error in this scenario is simply far too significant. Instead, companies – whether of global acclaim or local nature – should align themselves in embracing the best software that takes care of their accounting in the most streamlined of ways. Supplier fraud and compliance issues are two aberrant potentials in business that can be kept at bay once accounts teams start using accounts payable audit software. To put it simply, processes can be simplified by embracing this technology: control is increased and errors can almost always be prevented from happening.

An accounts payable audit can easily be approved. recovery audit software allows businesses to affirm themselves. Normally, a company will pay external auditors to help them identify any expensive over-payments made. But this is an expense that can be saved by the companies that decide, very sensibly, to internalise the process. Duplicate payments can be found within the company when the relevant software is used that draws the attention of accounting teams to any mistakes. Unfortunately many payees will not own up to receiving a payment twice over so it falls to the paying party to rectify such a costly mistake.

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

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Bacs: fast, easy, secure

bacs software has been around for decades now, but it still has not been universally adopted by businesses. This is odd when you consider the many advantages of making bacs payments, rather than older and less reliable or secure methods. There is still some suspicion about trusting computers to do your work for you, and people tend to be warier than ever where their money is concerned. The maxim holds that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, but that weak link is generally down to human error. In practice, bacs is a fast and reliable way of making payments to suppliers and receiving them from customers. It can save you time and money, and reduce the errors and risk associated with handling cash and paying third parties by other means.

Bacs stands for bankers automated clearing software. Essentially it is an electronic payment of funds from your account to another party’s account. This can take up to three days, but can equally be almost instant. (There is another version, SWIFT, which is guaranteed same-day.) Even in the worst case scenario, then, bacs is as fast as paying in a cheque or cash. It has several advantages over and above that.

One of these is security. Making online payments means you do not have to hold cash on the premises. It also reduces the scope for fraud, since you will no longer be writing out cheques. Reliability is another. The money leaves your account straight away, so you know how much is left, and you are not likely to be caused cash-flow problems by people delaying paying in cheques and then the money leaving your account unexpectedly. Plus, once you have correctly entered a payee’s details once, they can be reused after that. Paying the wrong person and having to regain the money shouldn’t be an issue.

Bacs software can be used to time payments, and in conjunction with accounting software can be used to take care of payroll commitments – automating pay day and saving a huge amount of time and effort, as well as reducing the error inevitable in doing the job manually. Bacs payments and receipts can also be combined with auditing software to further reduce error and duplicate payments, resulting in surprising savings for most businesses. In conclusion, there are several reasons to use bacs and few to ignore it.

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

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