3 Keys To Improving Your Accounts Payable Department

Blog, Financial Management

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Last updated Jul 26, 2017 at 2:38PM | Published on Nov 12, 2012 | Blog, Financial Management

  1. Automate your processes.
  2. Make them efficient.
  3. Engage all stakeholders in the business.

Those are the three key tips that a group of leaders at a shared services conference used to define the actions of a top performing accounts payable department, according to an article on sharedserviceslink.com.

Eric Jones, head of corporate payables at Lowe’s, stressed that “monitoring payment on time rates is a good indicator of the overall process.” And Bruce Kelly, managing director of advisory services at PRGX, “suggested looking at the number of touchpoints in any process as a guide of process efficiency.”

Reducing the number of touchpoints can substantially improve the overall process for a field services provider, especially when subcontractors are involved.

Matching subcontractor invoices to project work or partner repairs will be much easier if you give them portal access to your service calls and project activities. This way, they can enter completion and consumption data on their own.

Verification is easy when you have your vendors pre-approve what you are going to pay them even before you get their invoice.

So, who drives process excellence and efficiency? Every member of the staff. Getting senior management on board isn’t enough.

“Ideally, you will have cross-functional support, from both middle managers and the more senior decision makers,” Kelly told sharedserviceslink.com.

Source: Sharedserviceslink.com, October 2012