Ephraim Solutions: Accounting best practices

Accounting best practices

1. AccountingBest Practices Third Edition
2. AccountingBest Practices Third Edition Steven M. Bragg John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
3. This book is printed on acid-free paper.Copyright © 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. All rights reserved.Published simultaneously in CanadaNo part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmittedin any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning,or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United StatesCopyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorizationthrough payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.,222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-750-4470, or on the Webat www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to thePermissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030,201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, e-mail: permcoordinator@wiley.com.Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used theirbest efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect tothe accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and speciﬁcally disclaim any impliedwarranties of merchantability or ﬁtness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be createdor extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategiescontained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professionalwhere appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of proﬁt or anyother commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, orother damages.For general information on our other products and services, or technical support, pleasecontact our Customer Care Department within the United States at 800-762-2974, outsidethe United States at 317-572-3993 or fax 317-572-4002.Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears inprint may not be available in electronic books.For more information about Wiley products, visit our Web site at www.wiley.com.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:Bragg, Steven M. Accounting best practices / Steven M. Bragg.— 3rd ed. p. cm.Includes index. ISBN 0-471-44428-6 (CLOTH) 1. Accounting. I. Title. HF5635.B818 2003 657—dc21 2003006629Printed in the United States of America10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
4. Many capabilities originate through the direct assistance of parents in one’s childhood. In my case, readingwith the voraciousness of a predator came from my parents, one of whom tirelessly read books to me as a toddler, while the other constantly expanded my vocabulary with mandatory deﬁnition reviews from the dictionary.I also picked up a few especially choice words whenever my dad banged his thumb with a hammer. Mom and Dad, thank you once again.
5. About the AuthorSteven Bragg, CPA, CMA, CIA, CPIM, has been the chief ﬁnancial ofﬁcer orcontroller of four companies, as well as a consulting manager at Ernst & Youngand auditor at Deloitte & Touche. He received a master’s degree in ﬁnance fromBentley College, an MBA from Babson College, and a bachelor’s degree in eco-nomics from the University of Maine. He has been the two-time president of the10,000-member Colorado Mountain Club, and is an avid alpine skier, mountainbiker, and rescue diver. Mr. Bragg resides in Centennial, Colorado. He is the author of AdvancedAccounting Systems (Institute of Internal Auditors, Inc., 1997), and the followingbooks from John Wiley & Sons, Inc.:Accounting and Finance for Your Small BusinessAccounting Best PracticesAccounting Reference DesktopBusiness Ratios and FormulasThe Controller’s FunctionControllershipCost AccountingDesign and Maintenance of Accounting ManualsEssentials of PayrollFinancial AnalysisGovernment Accounting Best PracticesJust-in-Time AccountingManaging Explosive Corporate GrowthThe New CFO Financial Leadership ManualOutsourcingSales and Operations for Your Small Businessvi
6. ContentsPreface viiiChapter 1 Introduction 1Chapter 2 How to Use Best Practices 4Chapter 3 Accounts Payable Best Practices 17Chapter 4 Billing Best Practices 66Chapter 5 Budgeting Best Practices 87Chapter 6 Cash Management Best Practices 110Chapter 7 Collections Best Practices 128Chapter 8 Commissions Best Practices 154Chapter 9 Costing Best Practices 167Chapter 10 Filing Best Practices 184Chapter 11 Finance Best Practices 206Chapter 12 Financial Statements Best Practices 225Chapter 13 General Best Practices 253Chapter 14 General Ledger Best Practices 290Chapter 15 Internal Auditing Best Practices 308Chapter 16 Inventory Best Practices 325Chapter 17 Payroll Best Practices 346Appendix A Summary of Best Practices 376Index 389 IMPORTANT NOTE: Because of the rapidly changing nature of information in this ﬁeld, this prod- uct may be updated with annual supplements or with future editions. Please call 1-877-762-2974 or e-mail us at subscriber@wiley.com to receive any current update at no additional charge. We will send on approval any future supplements or new editions when they become available. If you pur- chased this product directly from John Wiley & Sons, Inc., we have already recorded your subscription for this update service. vii
7. PrefaceThe accounting department is a cost center. It does not directly generate revenues,but rather provides a ﬁxed set of services to the rest of a company, and is asked todo so at the lowest possible cost. Consequently, the accounting staff is calledupon to process transactions, write reports, create new processes or investigateold ones—while doing so as an ever-shrinking proportion of total expenses. This cost-based environment is a very difﬁcult one for most accountants, fortheir training is primarily in accounting rules and regulations, rather than in howto run a very specialized department in a cost-effective manner. They ﬁnd a fewideas for improvements from attending seminars or perusing accounting or man-agement magazines, but there is no centralized source of information for them toconsult, which itemizes a wide array of possible improvements. Hence the needfor the third edition of Accounting Best Practices. This book is compiled from the author’s lengthy experience in setting up andoperating a number of accounting departments, as well as by providing consult-ing services to other companies. Accordingly, it contains a blend of best practicesfrom a wide variety of accounting environments, ranging from very small part-nerships to multibillion-dollar corporations. This means that not all of the bestpractices described within these pages will be useful in every situation—someare designed to provide quick and inexpensive, incremental improvements to anoperation that can be installed in a day, while others are groundbreaking eventsthat require six-ﬁgure investments (or more) and months of installation time.Some will only work for companies of a certain size, and should be discarded asmore expensive and comprehensive accounting systems are installed—it all dependson the situation. Consequently, each chapter includes a table that notes the ease,duration, and cost of implementation for every best practice within it. The bestpractices are also noted in summary form in Appendix A. This third edition of Best Practices contains 60 new best practices. These areconcentrated in the areas of internal auditing, accounts payable, ﬁnance, and pay-roll. Some of the best practices involve solutions that have been posted on variousInternet sites, but there are fewer of these best practices than appeared in the sec-ond edition. Indeed, a great many Internet sites listed in the second edition haveclosed down, requiring the author to remove three best practices that had beenlisted in that book. The area of application service providers has been especiallyhard hit, with about two-thirds of the providers listed in the second edition havingshut their doors in the past two years. Chapter 15 is new, containing 19 best practices for the internal auditing func-tion. Though this area sometimes falls outside of the accounting function byreporting directly to the auditing committee of the board of directors, it moreviii
8. Preface ixcommonly reports to the chief ﬁnancial ofﬁcer, and therefore a discussion ofimprovements to it appears relevant for this book. Accounts payable remains the area with the largest concentration of bestpractices, with the total now rising to 40 just in this area. A number of risk man-agement and investor management best practices have also been added to theﬁnance chapter, as well as a smattering of best practices to a half-dozen otherchapters. The result is 292 best practices to assist the reader in creating a moreefﬁcient and effective accounting department. Given the large number of best practices in this book, it would have becomequite difﬁcult to locate speciﬁc items under the structure used in the second edi-tion. Accordingly, a table has been added to the front of each chapter, itemizingby subcategory the best practices located within it. For example, the accountspayable chapter sorts best practices into the categories of approvals, credit cards,documents, expense reports, management, payments, purchasing, and suppliers.A reference number is assigned to each best practice in the table, which one canthen use to ﬁnd the best practice within the chapter. The tables also graphicallydescribe the cost and duration of implementation required for each item, which isrepeated throughout the text that follows the descriptions of each best practice.For additional ease of indexing, these tables are collected into Appendix A. Finally, a selection of best practices have an “Author’s Choice” icon postednext to them. These best practices are those the author has found to be particu-larly effective in improving accounting operations. If you have any comments about this book, or would like to see additionalchapters added to future editions, please contact the author at brasto@aol.com.Thank you! STEVEN M. BRAGGCentennial, ColoradoMarch 2003
9. AcknowledgmentsA special note of thanks to the managing editor on this project, John DeRemigis,who ﬁrst conceived the idea of a best practices book.x
10. Chapter 1IntroductionA chief executive ofﬁcer (CEO) spends months deciding on a corporate strategy.The plan probably includes a mix of changes in products, customers, and markets,as well as demands for increased efﬁciencies or information in a number of exist-ing areas. The CEO then hands off the plan to a group of managers who are quitecapable of implementing many of the changes, but who scratch their heads overhow to squeeze greater efﬁciencies or information out of existing departments inorder to meet their strategic goals. This is where best practices come into play. A best practice is really any improvement over existing systems, thoughsome consultants prefer to conﬁne the deﬁnition to those few high-end and veryadvanced improvements that have been successfully installed by a few world-class companies. This book uses the broader deﬁnition of any improvement overexisting systems, since the vast majority of companies are in no position, either interms of technological capabilities, monetary resources, or management skill, tomake use of truly world-class best practices. Using this wider deﬁnition, a bestpractice can be anything that increases the existing level of efﬁciency, such asswitching to blanket purchase orders, signature stamps, and procurement cards tostreamline the accounts payable function. It can also lead to improved levels ofreporting for use by other parts of the company, such as activity-based costing,target costing, or direct costing reports in the costing function. Further, it canreduce the number of transaction errors, by such means as automated employeeexpense reports, automated bank account deductions, or a simpliﬁed commissioncalculation system. By implementing a plethora of best practices, a company cangreatly improve its level of efﬁciency and information reporting, which ﬁts nicelyinto the requirements of most strategic plans. One can go further than describing best practices as an excellent contributorto the fulﬁllment of a company’s strategy, and even state that a strategy does nothave much chance of success unless best practices are involved. The reason isthat best practices have such a large impact on overall efﬁciencies, they unleash alarge number of excess people who can then work on other strategic issues, aswell as reduce a company’s cash requirements, releasing more cash for invest-ment in strategic targets. In addition, some best practices link company functionsmore closely together, resulting in better overall functionality—this is a singularimprovement when a company is in the throes of changes caused by strategyshifts. Further, best practices can operate quite well in the absence of a strategicplan. For example, any department manager can install a variety of best practices 1
11. 2 Introductionwith no approval or oversight from above, resulting in a multitude of beneﬁcialchanges. Thus, best practices are a linchpin of the successful corporate strategy,and can also lead to improvements even if they are not part of a grand strategicvision. The scope of this book does not encompass all of the best practices that acompany should consider, only those used by the accounting department. Thisarea is especially susceptible to improvement through best practices, since it is heavilyprocedure-driven. When there are many procedures, there are many opportunitiesto enhance the multitude of procedure steps through automation, simpliﬁcation,elimination of tasks, error-prooﬁng, and outsourcing. Thus, of all the corporatefunctions, this is the one that reacts best to treatment through best practices. Chapter 2 covers a variety of issues related to the implementation of bestpractices, such as differentiating between incremental and reengineering changes,circumstances under which best practices are most likely to succeed, and how toplan and proceed with these implementations. Most important, there is a discus-sion of the multitude of reasons why a best practice implementation can fail,which is excellent reading prior to embarking on a new project, in order to beaware of all possible pitfalls. The chapter ends with a brief review of the impactof best practices on employees. This chapter is fundamental to the book, for itserves as the groundwork on which the remaining chapters are built. For example,if you are interested in modifying the general ledger account structure for use byan activity-based costing system, it is necessary to ﬁrst review the implementa-tion chapter to see how any programming, software package, or interdepartmentalissues might impact the project. Chapters 3 through 17 each describe a cluster of best practices, with a func-tional area itemized under each chapter. For example, Chapter 8 covers a varietyof improvements to a company’s commission calculation and payment systems,while Chapter 17 is strictly concerned with a variety of payroll-streamliningissues related to the collection of employee time information, processing it intopayments, and distributing those payments. Chapter 13 is a catchall chapter. Itcovers a variety of general best practices that do not ﬁt easily into other, morespeciﬁc chapters. Examples of these best practices are the use of process-centering,on-line reporting, and creating a contract-terms database. Chapters 3 through 17are the heart of the book since they contain information related to nearly 300 bestpractices. For Chapters 3 through 17, there is an exhibit near the beginning that showsthe general level of implementation cost and duration for each of the best prac-tices in the chapter. This information gives the reader a good idea of which bestpractices to search for and read through, in case these criteria are a strong consid-eration. For each chapter, there are a number of sections, each one describing abest practice. There is a brief description of the problems it can ﬁx, as well as noteson how it can be implemented, and any problems one may encounter while doing so.Each chapter concludes with a section that describes the impact of a recommendedmix of best practices on the functional area being covered. This last section
12. Introduction 3almost always includes a graphical representation of how certain best practicesimpact speciﬁc activities. Not all the best practices in each chapter are included inthis graphic, since some are mutually exclusive. This chapter layout is designedto give the reader a quick overview of the best practices that are most likely tomake a signiﬁcant impact on a functional area of the accounting department. The book ends with Appendix A. It lists all of the best practices in each of thepreceding chapters. This list allows the reader to quickly ﬁnd a potentially usefulbest practice. It is then a simple matter to refer back to the main text to obtainmore information about each item. This book is designed to assist anyone who needs to improve either the efﬁ-ciency of the accounting department, reduce its error rates, or provide betterinformation to other parts of a company. The best practices noted on the follow-ing pages will greatly assist in attaining this goal, which may be part of a grandstrategic vision or simply a desire by an accounting manager to improve thedepartment. The layout of the book is extremely practical: to list as many bestpractices as possible, to assist the reader in ﬁnding the most suitable ones, and todescribe any implementation problems that may arise. In short, this is the perfectdo-it-yourself ﬁx-it book for the manager who likes to tinker with the accountingdepartment.
13. Chapter 2How to Use Best PracticesThis chapter is about implementing best practices. It begins by describing thevarious kinds of best practices and goes on to cover those situations where theyare most likely to be installed successfully. The key components of a successfulbest practice installation are also noted. When planning to add a best practice, itis also useful to know the ways in which the implementation can fail, so there is alengthy list of reasons for failure. Finally, there is a brief discussion of the impactof change on employees and the organization. Only by carefully considering allof these issues in advance can one hope to achieve a successful best practiceimplementation that will result in increased levels of efﬁciency in the accountingdepartment.TYPES OF BEST PRACTICESThis section describes the two main types of best practices, each one requiringconsiderably different implementation approaches. The ﬁrst type of best practice is an incremental one. This usually involveseither a small modiﬁcation to an existing procedure or a replacement of a proce-dure that is so minor in effect that it has only a minimal impact on the organiza-tion, or indeed on the person who performs the procedure. The increased level ofefﬁciency contributed by a single best practice of this type is moderate at best,but this type is also the easiest to install, since there is little resistance from theorganization. An example of this type of best practice is using a signature stampto sign checks (see Chapter 3); it is simple, cuts a modest amount of time fromthe check preparation process, and there will be no complaints about its use.However, only when this type of best practice is used in large numbers is there asigniﬁcant increase in the level of efﬁciency of accounting operations. The second type of best practice involves a considerable degree of reengi-neering. This requires the complete reorganization or replacement of an existingfunction. The level of change is massive, resulting in employees either being laidoff or receiving vastly different job descriptions. The level of efﬁciency improve-ment can be several times greater than the old method it is replacing. However, thelevel of risk matches the reward, for this type of best practice meets with enor-mous resistance and consequently is at great risk of failure. An example of thistype of best practice is eliminating the accounts payable department in favor of4
14. The Most Fertile Ground for Best Practices 5having the receiving staff approve all payments at the receiving dock (see Chapter3); it involves the elimination of many jobs and is an entirely new approach to pay-ing suppliers. A single best practice implementation of this sort can reap majorimprovements in the level of accounting efﬁciency. Thus, given the considerable number and size of the differences between theincremental and reengineering best practices, it is necessary to ﬁrst determineinto which category a best practice falls before designing a plan for implementingit. Given the difﬁculty of implementation for a reengineering project, it may evenbe necessary to delay implementation or intersperse a series of such projects witheasier incremental projects, in order to allow employees to recover from thereengineering projects.THE MOST FERTILE GROUND FOR BEST PRACTICESBefore installing any best practice, it is useful to review the existing environmentto see if there is a reasonable chance for the implementation to succeed. The fol-lowing bullet points note the best environments in which best practices can notonly be installed, but also have a fair chance of continuing to succeed: • If benchmarking shows a problem. Some organizations regularly compare their performance levels against those of other companies, especially those with a reputation for having extremely high levels of performance. If there is a signiﬁcant difference in the performance levels of these other organizations and the company doing the benchmarking, this can serve as a reminder that continuous change is necessary in order to survive. If management sees and heeds this warning, the environment in which best practices will be accepted is greatly improved. • If management has a change orientation. Some managers have a seemingly genetic disposition toward change. If an accounting department has such a person in charge, there will certainly be a drive toward many changes. If any- thing, this type of person can go too far, implementing too many projects with not enough preparation, resulting in a confused operations group whose newly revised systems may take a considerable amount of time to untangle. The presence of a detail-oriented second-in-command is very helpful for preserving order and channeling the energies of such a manager into the most productive directions. • If the company is experiencing poor ﬁnancial results. If there is a signiﬁcant loss, or a trend in that direction, this serves as a wake-up call to management, which in turn results in the creation of a multitude of best practices projects. In this case, the situation may even go too far, with so many improvement projects going on at once that there are not enough resources to go around, resulting in the ultimate completion of few, if any, of the best practices.
15. 6 How to Use Best Practices • If there is new management. Most people who are newly installed as managers of either the accounting department or (better yet) the entire organization want to make changes in order to leave their marks on the organization. Though this can involve less effective practice items like organizational changes or a new strategic direction, it is possible that there will be a renewed focus on efﬁciency that will result in the implementation of new best practices.In short, as long as there is a willingness by management to change and a goodreason for doing so, then there is fertile ground for the implementation of a mul-titude of best practices.PLANNING FOR BEST PRACTICESA critical issue for the success of any best practices implementation project is anadequate degree of advance planning. The following bullet points describe thekey components of a typical best practices implementation plan: • Capacity requirements. Any project plan must account for the amount of capacity needed to ensure success. Capacity can include the number of people, computers, or ﬂoor space that is needed. For example, if the project team requires 20 people, then there must be a planning item to ﬁnd and equip a sufﬁcient amount of space for this group. Also, a project that requires a con- siderable amount of programming time should reserve that time in advance with the programming staff to ensure that the programming is completed on time. Also, the management team must have a sufﬁcient amount of time available to properly oversee the project team’s activities. If any of these issues are not addressed in advance, there can be a major impact on the suc- cess of the implementation. • Common change calendar. If there are many best practices being imple- mented at the same time, there is a high risk that resources scheduled for one project will not be available for other projects. For example, a key software developer may receive independent requests from multiple project teams to develop software, and cannot satisfy all the requests. To avoid this, one should use a single change calendar, so that planned changes can be seen in the context of other changes being planned. The calendar should be examined for conﬂicts every time a change is made to it, and also be made available for general review, so that all project teams can consult it whenever needed. • Contingencies. Murphy’s Law always applies, so there should be contingen- cies built into the project plan. For example, if the project team is being set up in a new building, there is always a chance that phone lines will not be installed in time. To guard against this possibility, there should be an addi- tional project step to obtain some cellular phones, which will supply the team’s communications needs until the phone lines can be installed.
16. Planning for Best Practices 7 • Dependencies. The steps required to complete a project must be properly sequenced so that any bottleneck steps are clearly deﬁned and have sufﬁcient resources allocated to them to ensure that they are completed on time. For example, a project planning person cannot set up the plan if there is no pro- ject planning software available and loaded into the computer. Consequently, this step must be completed before the planning task can commence. • Funding requirements. Any project requires some funding, such as the pur- chase of equipment for the project team or software licenses or employee training. Consequently, the project plan must include the dates on which fund- ing is expected, so that dependent tasks involving the expenditure of those funds can be properly planned. • Review points. For all but the smallest projects, there must be control points at which the project manager has a formal review meeting with those people who are responsible for certain deliverables. These review points must be built into the plan, along with a sufﬁcient amount of time for follow-up meet- ings to resolve any issues that may arise during the initial review meetings. • Risk levels. Some best practices, especially those involving a large propor- tion of reengineering activities, run a considerable risk of failure. In these cases, it is necessary to conduct a careful review of what will happen if the project fails. For example, can the existing system be reinstituted if the new system does not work? What if funding runs out? What if management sup- port for the project falters? What if the level of technology is too advanced for the company to support? The answers to these questions may result in additional project steps to safeguard the project, or to at least back it up with a contingency plan in case the project cannot reach a successful conclusion. • Total time required. All of the previous planning steps are inﬂuenced by one of the most important considerations of all—how much time is allocated to the project. Though there may be some play in the ﬁnal project due date, it is always unacceptable to let a project run too long, since it ties up the time of project team members and will probably accumulate extra costs until it is completed. Consequently, the project team must continually revise the exist- ing project plan to account for new contingencies and problems as they arise, given the overriding restriction of the amount of time available.The elements of planning that have just been described will all go for naught ifthere is not an additional linkage to corporate strategy at the highest levels. Thereason is that although an implementation may be completely successful, it maynot make any difference, and even be rendered unusable, if corporate strategycalls for a shift that will render the best practice obsolete. For example, a ﬁnenew centralized accounts payable facility for the use of all corporate divisions isnot of much use if the general corporate direction is to spin off or sell all ofthose divisions. Thus, proper integration of low-level best practices planning
17. 8 How to Use Best Practiceswith high-level corporate planning is required to ensure that the correct projectsare completed. Given the large number of issues to resolve in order to give an implementa-tion project a reasonable chance of success, it is apparent that the presence of amanager who is very experienced in the intricacies of project planning is a keycomponent of an effective project team. Consequently, the acquisition of such aperson should be one of the ﬁrst steps to include in a project plan. This section described in general terms the key components of a project planthat must be considered in order to foresee where problems may arise in thecourse of an implementation. We now proceed to a discussion of the impact oftime on the success of a best practices implementation.TIMING OF BEST PRACTICESBoth the timing of a best practice implementation and the time it takes to com-plete it have a major impact on the likelihood of success. The timing of an implementation project is critical. For example, an installa-tion that comes at the same time as a major deliverable in another area willreceive scant attention from the person who is most responsible for using the bestpractice, since it takes a distant second place to the deliverable. Also, any projectthat comes on the heels of a disastrous implementation will not be expected tosucceed, though this problem can be overcome by targeting a quick and easy pro-ject that results in a rapid success—and that overcomes the stigma of the earlierfailure. Further, proper implementation timing must take into account other pro-ject implementations going on elsewhere in the company or even in the samedepartment, so that there is not a conﬂict over project resources. Only by care-fully considering these issues prior to scheduling a project will a best practiceimplementation not be impacted by timing issues. In addition to timing, the time required to complete a project is of majorimportance. A quick project brings with it the aura of success, a reputation forcompletion, and a much better chance of being allowed to take on a more diffi-cult and expensive project. Alternatively, a project that impacts lots of depart-ments or people, or that involves the liberal application of cutting-edge technol-ogy, runs a major risk of running for a long time; and the longer the project, thegreater the risk that something will go wrong, objections will arise, or thatfunding will run out. Thus, close attention to project duration will increase theodds of success.IMPLEMENTING BEST PRACTICESThe actual implementation of any best practice requires a great degree of carefulplanning, as noted earlier. However, planning is not enough. The implementation
18. Implementing Best Practices 9process itself requires a number of key components in order to ensure a success-ful conclusion. This section discusses those components. One of the ﬁrst implementation steps for all but the simplest best practiceimprovements is to study and ﬂowchart the existing system about to be improved.By doing so, one can ascertain any unusual requirements that are not readilyapparent and that must be included in the planning for the upcoming implementa-tion. Though some reengineering efforts do not spend much time on this task, onthe grounds that the entire system is about to be replaced, the same issue stillapplies—there are usually special requirements, unique to any company, thatmust be addressed in any new system. Accordingly, nearly all implementationprojects must include this critical step. Another issue is the cost-beneﬁt analysis. This is a compilation of all thecosts required to both install and maintain a best practice, which is offset againstthe beneﬁts of doing so. These costs must include project team payroll andrelated expenses, outside services, programming costs, training, travel, and capi-tal expenditures. This step is worth a great deal of attention, for a wise managerwill not undertake a new project, no matter how cutting-edge and high-proﬁle itmay be, if there is not a sound analysis in place that clearly shows the beneﬁt ofmoving forward with it. Yet another implementation issue is the use of new technology. Though theremay be new devices or software on the market that can clearly improve the efﬁ-ciency of a company’s operations, and perhaps even make a demonstrative impacton a company’s competitive situation, it still may be more prudent to wait untilthe technology has been tested in the marketplace for a short time before pro-ceeding with an implementation. This is a particular problem if there is only onesupplier available that offers the technology, especially if that supplier is a smallone or with inadequate funding, with the attendant risk of going out of business.In most cases, the prudent manager will elect to use technology that has provenitself in the marketplace, rather than using the most cutting-edge applications. Of great importance to most best practice implementations is system testing.Any new application, unless it is astoundingly simple, carries with it the risk offailure. This risk must be tested repeatedly to ensure that it will not occur underactual use. The type of testing can take a variety of forms. One is volume testing,to ensure that a large number of employees using the system at the same time willnot result in failure. Another is feature testing, in which test transactions that testthe boundaries of the possible information to be used are run through the system.Yet another possibility is recovery testing—bringing down a computer systemsuddenly to see how easy it is to restart the system. All of these approaches, orothers, depending on the type of best practice, should be completed beforeunleashing a new application on employees. One of the last implementation steps before ﬁring up a new best practice is toprovide training to employees in how to run the new system. This must be doneas late as possible, since employee retention of this information will dwindlerapidly if not reinforced by actual practice. In addition, this training should be
19. 10 How to Use Best Practiceshands-on whenever possible, since employees retain the most information whentraining is conducted in this manner. It is important to identify in advance all pos-sible users of a new system for training, since a few untrained employees canresult in the failure of a new best practice. A key element of any training class is procedures. These must be completed,reviewed, and be made available for employee use not only at the time of train-ing, but also at all times thereafter, which requires a good manager to oversee theprocedure creation and distribution phases. Procedure-writing is a special skillthat may require the hiring of technical writers, interviewers, and systems ana-lysts to ensure that procedures are properly crafted. The input of users into theaccuracy of all procedures is also an integral step in this process. Even after the new system has been installed, it is necessary to conduct apost-implementation review. This analysis determines if the cost savings or efﬁ-ciency improvements are in the expected range, what problems arose during theimplementation that should be avoided during future projects, and what issues arestill unresolved from the current implementation. This last point is particularlyimportant, for many managers do not follow through completely on all the strayimplementation issues, which inevitably arise after a new system is put in place.Only by carefully listing these issues and working through them will the employ-ees using the new system be completely satisﬁed with how a best practice hasbeen installed. An issue that arises during all phases of a project implementation is commu-nications. Since there may be a wide range of activities going on, many of themdependent upon each other, it is important that the status of all project steps becontinually communicated to the entire project team, as well as to all affectedemployees. By doing so, a project manager can avoid such gaffes as having onetask proceed without knowing that, due to changes elsewhere in the project, theentire task has been rendered unnecessary. These communications should not justbe limited to project plan updates, but should also include all meeting minutes inwhich changes are decided on, documented, and approved by team leaders. Bypaying attention to this important item at every step of an implementation, theentire process will be completed much more smoothly. As described in this section, a successful best practice implementation nearlyalways includes a review of the current system, a cost-beneﬁt analysis, responsi-ble use of new technology, system testing, training, and a post-implementationreview, with a generous dash of communications at every step.BEST PRACTICE DUPLICATIONIt can be a particularly difﬁcult challenge to duplicate a successful best practicewhen opening a new company facility, especially if expansion is contemplated inmany locations over a short time period. The difﬁculty with best practice duplica-tion is that employees in the new locations are typically given a brief overview of
20. Why Best Practices Fail 11a best practice and told to “go do it.” Under this scenario, they have only asketchy idea of what they are supposed to do, and so create a process that variesin some key details from the baseline situation. To make matters worse, managersat the new location may feel that they can create a better best practice from thestart, and so create something that differs in key respects from the baseline. Forboth reasons, the incidence of best practice duplication failure is high. To avoid these problems, a company should ﬁrst be certain that it has accu-mulated all possible knowledge about a functioning best practice—the forms,policies, procedures, equipment, and special knowledge required to make it workproperly—and then transfer this information into a concise document that can beshared with new locations. Second, a roving team of expert users must be com-missioned to visit all new company locations and personally install the new sys-tems, thereby ensuring that the proper level of experience with a best practice isbrought to bear on a duplication activity. Finally, a company should transfer thepractitioners of best practices to new locations on a semipermanent basis toensure that the necessary knowledge required to make a best practice effectiveover the long term remains on-site. By taking these steps, a company can increaseits odds of spreading best practices throughout all of its locations. A special issue is the tendency of a new company location to attempt toenhance a copied best practice at the earliest opportunity. This tendency fre-quently arises from the belief that one can always improve upon something thatwas created elsewhere. However, these changes may negatively impact otherparts of the company’s systems, resulting in an overall reduction in performance.Consequently, it is better to insist that new locations duplicate a best practice inall respects and use it to match the performance levels of the baseline locationbefore they are allowed to make any changes to it. By doing so, the new locationmust take the time to fully utilize the best practice and learn its intricacies beforethey can modify it.WHY BEST PRACTICES FAILThere is a lengthy list of reasons why a best practice installation may not suc-ceed, as noted in the following bullet points. The various reasons for failure canbe grouped into a relatively small cluster of primary reasons. The ﬁrst is lack ofplanning, which can include inadequate budgeting for time, money, or personnel.Another is the lack of cooperation by other entities, such as the programmingstaff or other departments that will be impacted by any changes. The ﬁnal, andmost important, problem is that there is little or no effort made to prepare theorganization for change. This last item tends to build up over time as more andmore best practices are implemented, eventually resulting in the total resistanceby the organization to any further change. At its root, this problem involves a fun-damental lack of communication, especially to those people who are mostimpacted by change. When a single implementation is completed without
21. 12 How to Use Best Practicesinforming all employees of the change, this may be tolerated, but a continuousstream of them will encourage a revolt. In alphabetical order, the various causesof failure are noted as follows: • Alterations to packaged software. A very common cause of failure is that a best practice requires changes to a software package provided by a software supplier; after the changes are made, the company ﬁnds that the newest release of the software contains features that it must have and so it updates the software—wiping out the programming changes that were made to accommodate the best practice. This problem can also arise even if there is only a custom interface between the packaged software and some other application needed for a best practice, because a software upgrade may alter the data accessed through the interface. Thus, alterations to packaged soft- ware are doomed to failure unless there is absolutely no way that the com- pany will ever update the software package. • Custom programming. A major cause of implementation failure is that the programming required to make it a reality either does not have the requested speciﬁcations, costs more than expected, arrives too late, is unreliable—or all of the above! Since many best practices are closely linked to the latest advances in technology, this is an increasingly common cause of failure. To keep from being a victim of programming problems, one should never attempt to implement the most ‘‘bleeding-edge” technology, because it is the most subject to failure. Instead, wait for some other company to work out all of the bugs and make it a reliable concept, and then proceed with the imple- mentation. Also, it is useful to interview other people who have gone through a complete installation to see what tips they can give that will result in a smoother implementation. Finally, one should always interview any other employees who have had programming work done for them by the in-house staff. If the results of these previous efforts were not acceptable, it may be better to look outside of the company for more competent programming assistance. • Inadequate preparation of the organization. Communication is the key to a successful implementation. Alternatively, no communication keeps an orga- nization from understanding what is happening; this increases the rumors about a project, builds resistance to it, and reduces the level of cooperation that people are likely to give to it. Avoiding this issue requires a considerable amount of up-front communication about the intentions and likely impact of any project, with that communication targeted not just at the impacted man- agers, but also at all impacted employees, and to some extent even the corpo- ration or department as a whole. • Intransigent personnel. A major cause of failure is the employee who either refuses to use a best practice or who actively tries to sabotage it. This type of person may have a vested interest in using the old system, does not like
22. Why Best Practices Fail 13 change in general, or has a personality clash with someone on the implemen- tation team. In any of these cases, the person must be won over through good communication (especially if the employee is in a controlling position) or removed to a position that has no impact on the project. If neither of these actions is successful, the project will almost certainly fail. • Lack of control points. One of the best ways to maintain control over any project is to set up regular review meetings, as well as additional meetings to review the situation when preset milestone targets are reached. These meetings are designed to see how a project is progressing, to discuss any problems that have occurred or are anticipated, and to determine how current or potential problems can best be avoided. Without the beneﬁt of these regular meetings, it is much more likely that unexpected problems will arise, or that existing ones will be exacerbated. • Lack of funding. A project can be canceled either because it has a signiﬁcant cost overrun that exceeds the original funding request or because it was ini- tiated without any funding request in the ﬁrst place. Either approach results in failure. Besides the obvious platitude of ‘‘don’t go over budget,” the best way to avoid this problem is to build a cushion into the original funding request that should see the project through, barring any unusually large extra expenditures. • Lack of planning. A critical aspect of any project is the planning that goes into it. If there is no plan, there is no way to determine the cost, number of employees, or time requirements, nor is there any formal review of the inher- ent project risks. Without this formal planning process, a project is very likely to hit a snag or be stopped cold at some point prior to its timely com- pletion. On the contrary, using proper planning results in a smooth imple- mentation process that builds a good reputation for the project manager and thereby leads to more funding for additional projects. • Lack of post-implementation review. Though it is not a criterion for the suc- cessful implementation of any single project, a missing post-implementation review can cause the failure of later projects. For example, if such a review reveals that a project was completed in spite of the inadequate project plan- ning skills of a speciﬁc manager, it might be best to use a different person in the future for new projects, thereby increasing his or her chances of success. • Lack of success in earlier efforts. If a manager builds a reputation for not successfully completing best practices projects, it becomes increasingly dif- ﬁcult to complete new ones. The problem is that no one believes that a new effort will succeed and so there is little commitment to doing it. Also, upper management is much less willing to allocate funds to a manager who has not developed a proven track record for successful implementations. The best way out of this jam is to assign a different manager to an implementation project, one with a proven track record of success.
23. 14 How to Use Best Practices • Lack of testing. A major problem for the implementation of especially large and complex projects, especially those involving programming, is that they are rushed into production without a thorough testing process to discover and correct all bugs that might interfere with or freeze the orderly conduct of work in the areas they are designed to improve. There is nothing more dangerous than to install a wonderful new system in a critical area of the company, only to see that critical function fail completely due to a problem that could have been discovered in a proper testing program. It is always worthwhile to build some extra time into a project budget for an adequate amount of testing. • Lack of top management support. If a project requires a large amount of funding or the cooperation of multiple departments, it is critical to have the complete support of the top management team. If not, any required funding may not be allocated, while there is also a strong possibility that any object- ing departments will be able to sidetrack it easily. This is an especially com- mon problem when the project has no clear project sponsor at all—without a senior-level manager to drive it, a project will sputter along and eventually fade away without coming anywhere near completion. • Relying on other departments. As soon as another department’s cooperation becomes a necessary component of a best practice installation, the chances of success drop markedly. The odds become even smaller if multiple depart- ments are involved. The main reason is that there is now an extra manager involved, who may not have the commitment of the accounting manager to make the implementation a success. In addition, the staff of the other depart- ment may inﬂuence their manager not to help out, while there may also be a problem with the other department not having a sufﬁcient amount of funding to complete its share of the work. For example, an accounting department can beneﬁt greatly at period-end if the warehouse is using cycle-counting to keep inventory accuracy levels high, since there is no need for a physical inventory count. However, if the warehouse does not have the extra staff available to count inventory, the work will not be done, no matter how badly the accounting staff wants to implement this best practice. • Too many changes in a short time. An organization will rebel against too much change if it is clustered into a short time frame. The reason is that change is unsettling, especially when it involves a large part of people’s job descriptions, so that nearly everything they do is altered. This can result in direct employee resistance to further change, sabotaging new projects, a work slowdown, or (quite likely) the departure of the most disgruntled workers. This problem is best solved by planning for lapses between implementation projects to let the employees settle down. The best way to accomplish this lag between changes without really slowing down the overall schedule of implementation is to shift projects around in the accounting department, so that no functional area is on the receiving end of two consecutive projects.
24. The Impact of Best Practices on Employees 15The primary reason for listing all of these causes of failure is not to discouragethe reader from ever attempting a best practice installation. On the contrary, thisallows one to prepare for and avoid all roadblocks on the path to ultimate imple-mentation success.THE IMPACT OF BEST PRACTICES ON EMPLOYEESThe impact of best practices on employees is significant. In the short run, thereis an overwhelming feeling of discontent, because any kind of change makesemployees nervous about what the impact will be on their jobs. Admittedly, aprimary purpose of using best practices is to reduce the payroll expense inthe accounting department, or at least to handle an increased workload withthe same number of employees. Consequently, employees have a reason to beconcerned. There are several ways to deal with employee concerns. One is to create astandard policy of rolling all displaced employees onto a project team that willbe used to implement even more best practices. This approach tends to attractthe best employees to the project team, but also has the disadvantage of eventu-ally displacing so many employees that there are too many people stafﬁng theimplementation team. The opposite approach is to be up-front about projectedchanges to employee jobs and to give a generous amount of both notice and sev-erance pay to those people who will be displaced. Given the realities of payingextra money to departing employees and the need for well-staffed implementa-tion teams, the recommended approach is somewhere in the middle—to retain afew of the best employees to run new projects, which reduces the amount of sev-erance that must be paid out to departing employees. The other problem, which is more of a long-run issue, is communications.Even after the initial round of layoffs, there will be a continued emphasis on con-stantly improving the accounting department’s processes. These changes cannottake place in a vacuum. Instead, the implementation team must carefully researchthe costs and beneﬁts of each prospective best practice, discuss the issue withthose employees who are most knowledgeable about how any changes willimpact the organization as a whole, and rely to a considerable extent on theiradvice in regard to whether there should be any implementation at all, and if so,how the best practice should be modiﬁed to ﬁt the organization’s particular cir-cumstances. Only by making the maximum use of employees’ knowledge and bypaying close attention to their opinions and fears can an implementation teamcontinually succeed in installing a series of best practices. Thus, communication is the key—both in handling employee departures inthe short term, while the accounting department is reducing its stafﬁng levels tomatch greater levels of efﬁciency, and in the long run, when employee coopera-tion is crucial to continued success.
25. 16 How to Use Best PracticesSUMMARYThis chapter has given an overview of the situations in which best practicesimplementations are most likely to succeed, what factors are most important tothe success or failure of an implementation, and how to successfully create andfollow through on an implementation project. By following the recommendationsmade in this chapter, not only those regarding how to implement, but also thoseregarding what not to do, a manager will have a much higher chance of success.With this information in hand, one can now conﬁdently peruse the remainingchapters, which are full of best practices. The reader will be able to select thosepractices having the best chance of a successful implementation, based on thespeciﬁc circumstances pertaining to each manager, such as the funding, timeavailable, and any obstacles, such as entrenched employees or a corporate intran-sigence pertaining to new projects.
26. Chapter 3Accounts PayableBest PracticesThe accounts payable function is the most labor-intensive of all the accountingfunctions and is therefore an excellent source of labor savings if the correct bestpractices can be implemented. The basic process in most companies is to receivethree types of information from three sources—an invoice from the supplier, a pur-chase order from the purchasing department, and a proof of receipt from the receivingdepartment. The accounts payable staff then matches all three documents to ensurethat a prospective payment is authorized and that the underlying goods have beenreceived, and then pays the bill. The process is labor-intensive partially becausethere is such a large amount of matching to do, but also because the three docu-ments almost never match. Either the purchase order quantities or prices do notmatch what the supplier is charging, or else the amount received does not match thequantities on the other two documents. Because of these inaccuracies, the amountof labor required to issue a payment can be extraordinarily high. The best practices in this chapter fall into a few main categories, most of themdesigned to reduce the matching work. One category attempts to consolidate thenumber of invoices arriving from suppliers, thereby shrinking the paperworkfrom this source—typical best practices in this area are using procurement cardsand shrinking the number of suppliers. Another category tries to reduce or elimi-nate the number of receiving documents. Typical best practices in this area aresubstituting occasional audits for ongoing matching of receiving documents, aswell as directly entering receipts into the computer system. Finally, another cate-gory reduces the number of purchase orders that must be matched. Typical bestpractices in this area include using blanket purchase orders and automating three-way matching. Other solutions to the matching problem involve going away fromthe traditional matching process entirely, by using payments based solely onproof of receipt. It is not possible to use all of these best practices together, sincesome are mutually exclusive—one must be careful in choosing the correct bestpractices. Lastly, a number of best practices focus on the overall accounts payableprocess, attempting to either shrink or automate the number of steps requiredbefore a company issues payment to a supplier. Examples of best practices in thisarea include using a signature stamp and switching to wire transfers. The number of best practices in the accounts payable area indicates that thisfunction is ripe for improvements. However, some best practices require a large 17
27. 18 Accounts Payable Best Practicesinvestment of money or time, as noted in the chart in the next section, so the persondoing the improving should verify that resources are available before embarking onan implementation.IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES FOR ACCOUNTS PAYABLEBEST PRACTICESThis section notes a number of issues related to the implementation of each bestpractice. The reader should peruse Exhibit 3.1 to ensure that the effort required toinstall a best practice is in agreement with the available constraints. For example,automating expense reporting is listed as requiring a long implementation periodand being moderately expensive (all because of the programming required). If thereader has a large staff of traveling employees who constantly submit expensereports, this may be a viable option, despite the projected implementation barriers.However, if only a few expense reports are submitted, then perhaps this is a bestpractice that should be passed over in favor of more practical opportunities. Exhibit 3.1 lists all of the best practices in this chapter. Next to the bestpractices are ratings for estimates of the cost to completely install each bestpractice. The last column shows the duration of implementation, which can bean issue for anyone looking for quick results. Any large programming projectsare assumed to have long implementation durations. One should be careful to select only ‘‘quick hits” from Exhibit 3.1. Thoughthese best practices are certainly worth the effort of installing, it is important toremember that some of the most difﬁcult items on the list can have the largestpayback. Accordingly, it is best to review the list in detail and assemble a set ofbest practices that provide for a combination of quick and easy victories, whilealso allowing for solid, long-term improvements that will impact the accountspayable function’s levels of efﬁciency and effectiveness.3–1 PAY BASED ON RECEIVING APPROVAL ONLYThe accounts payable process is one of the most convoluted of all the processesthat a company can adopt, irrespective of the department. First, it requires thecollection of information from multiple departments—purchase orders from thepurchasing department, invoices from suppliers, and receiving documents fromthe receiving department. The process then involves matching these documents,which almost always contain exceptions, and then tracking down someone eitherto approve exceptions or at least to sign the checks, which must then be mailed tosuppliers. The key to success in this area is to thoroughly reengineer the entireprocess by eliminating the paperwork, the multiple sources of information, and
28. 3–1 Pay Based on Receiving Approval Only 19Exhibit 3.1 Summary of Accounts Payable Best Practices Best Practice Cost Install TimeApprovals 3–1 Pay based on receiving approval only 3–2 Reduce required approvals 3–3 Use negative assurance for invoice approvalsCredit Cards 3–4 Use procurement cardsDocuments 3–5 Automate three-way matching 3–6 Digitize accounts payable documents 3–7 Directly enter receipts into computer 3–8 Fax transmission of accounts payable documents 3–9 Have suppliers include their supplier numbers on invoices 3–10 Receive billings through electronic data interchange 3–11 Request that suppliers enter invoices through a Web site 3–12 Shift incoming billings to an EDI data- entry supplierExpense Reports 3–13 Audit expense reports 3–14 Automate expense reporting 3–15 Eliminate cash advances for employee travel 3–16 Link corporate travel policies to automated expense reporting system 3–17 Transmit expense reports by e-mailManagement 3–18 Centralize the accounts payable function 3–19 Issue standard account code list 3–20 Link supplier requests to the accounts payable database (continues)
29. 20 Accounts Payable Best PracticesExhibit 3.1 (Continued) Best Practice Cost Install TimeManagement 3–21 Outsource the accounts payable function 3–22 Outsource value-added tax reclamations 3–23 Shrink the supplier base 3–24 Withhold ﬁrst payment until W-9 form is receivedPayments 3–25 Automate payments for repetitive processing 3–26 Eliminate manual checks 3–27 Have regularly scheduled check signing meetings 3–28 Incorporate copy protection features into checks 3–29 Issue ACH payments along with remittance detail 3–30 Substitute petty cash for checks 3–31 Substitute wire transfers for checks 3–32 Use signature stampPurchasing 3–33 Create direct purchase interfaces to suppliers 3–34 Create on-line purchasing catalog 3–35 Use blanket purchase ordersSuppliers 3–36 Add suppliers’ 800-numbers to master ﬁle 3–37 Assign payables staff to speciﬁc suppliers 3–38 Create different supplier accounts for different terms 3–39 Ignore supplier invoices and pay from statements 3–40 Issue standard adjustment letters to suppliers
30. 3–1 Pay Based on Receiving Approval Only 21the additional approvals. The only best practice that truly addresses the underly-ing problems of the accounts payable process is paying based on receipt. To pay based on receipt, one must ﬁrst do away with the concept of having anaccounts payable staff that performs the traditional matching process. Instead, thereceiving staff checks to see if there is a purchase order at the time of receipt. Ifthere is, the computer system automatically pays the supplier. Sounds simple? It isnot. A company must have several features installed before the concept will func-tion properly. The main issue is having a computer terminal at the receiving dock.When a supplier shipment arrives, a receiving person takes the purchase ordernumber and quantity received from the shipping documentation and punches itinto the computer. The computer system will check against an on-line database ofopen purchase orders to see if the shipment was authorized. If so, the system willautomatically schedule a payment to the supplier based on the purchase orderprice, which can be sent by wire transfer. If the purchase order number is not in thedatabase, or if there is no purchase order number at all, the shipment is rejected atthe receiving dock. Note that the accounts payable staff takes no part whatsoeverin this process—everything has been shifted to a simple step at the receiving loca-tion. The process is shown graphically in Exhibit 3.2. Before laying off the entire accounts payable staff and acquiring such a sys-tem, there are several problems to overcome. They are as follows: • Train suppliers. Every supplier who sends anything to a company must be trained to include the purchase order number, the company’s part number, and the quantity shipped on the shipping documentation, so this information can be punched into the computer at the receiving location. The information can be encoded as bar codes to make the data-entry task easier for the receiv- ing employees. Training a supplier may be difﬁcult, especially if the com- pany only purchases a small quantity of goods from the supplier. To make it worthwhile for the supplier to go to this extra effort, it may be necessary to concentrate purchases with a smaller number of suppliers to give each one a signiﬁcant volume of orders. • Alter the accounting system. The traditional accounting software is not designed to allow approvals at the receiving dock. Accordingly, a company will have to reprogram the system to allow the reengineered process to be performed. This can be an exceptionally major undertaking, especially if the software is constantly being upgraded by the supplier—every upgrade will wipe out any custom programming that the company may have created. • Prepare for miscellaneous payments. The accounts payable department will not really go away because there will always be stray supplier invoices of various kinds arriving for payment that cannot possibly go through the receiving dock, such as subscription payments, utility bills, and repair invoices. Accord- ingly, the old payments system must still be maintained, though at a greatly reduced level, to handle these items.
31. 22 Accounts Payable Best PracticesExhibit 3.2 The Process Flow for Payment Based on Receiving Approval • Pay without a supplier invoice. One of the key aspects of the reengineered process is paying based on the information in the purchase order, rather than the information in the supplier’s invoice. To do so, one must have a database of all the tax rates that every supplier would charge, so that the company’s computer system can automatically include these taxes in the invoice pay- ments. Also, there will sometimes be discrepancies between the purchase order prices and quantities paid, versus those expected by suppliers, so an accounts payable staff must be kept on hand to correspond with suppliers to reconcile these issues.
32. 3–2 Reduce Required Approvals 23 The preceding bullet points reveal that there are a wide array of problemsthat must ﬁrst be overcome before the dramatic improvements of this newprocess can be realized. However, for a company that has a large accountspayable staff, this can be a highly rewarding system to install, for the savingsrealized can be the elimination of the majority of the accounts payable depart-ment. Cost: Installation time:3–2 REDUCE REQUIRED APPROVALSThe accounts payable process is typically a long one. Part of the problem is thatmany accounting systems require a manager’s signature (or those of several man-agers!) on a supplier invoice before it can be paid. Though it is reasonable to havesuch a requirement if there is no purchase order for the invoice, many systemsrequire the signature even if there is already a purchase order (which is, in effect,a form of prior approval). Also, most accounting systems require a manager’s sig-nature on unapproved invoices, no matter how small the invoice may be. Theresult of these common approval procedures is that the accounts payable staffdelivers invoices to managers for signatures and then waits until the documentsare returned before proceeding further with the payment process. If the manageris not available to sign an invoice, then it sits; if the manager loses the invoice (acommon occurrence), the invoice is never paid, resulting in an angry supplierwho must send a fresh copy of the invoice for a second pass through the dangerousshoals of the company’s approval process. This is a clearly inefﬁcient process,both lengthy and likely to annoy suppliers. What can be done? A superb best practice for any company to implement is to limit approvals toa single event or document and, wherever possible, to limit this approval to aperiod prior to the receipt of the supplier invoice. For example, an authorized sig-nature on a purchase order should be sufﬁcient overall approval to pay an invoice.After all, if the signature was good enough to authorize the initial purchase of theitem or service, shouldn’t the same signature be sufﬁcient approval for the pay-ment of the supplier’s bill? In addition, by shifting the approval to the purchaseorder, we avoid having the accounts payable staff track down someone after thesupplier’s invoice has been received, which effectively chops time from the overallaccounts payable process. Another variation is to use a signature on the purchaserequisition, which comes before the purchase order. As long as either document issigned by an authorized person and sent to the accounts payable staff in advance,it does not matter which document is used as authorization. The key is to use a singleauthorization, before the supplier sends an invoice. One reason why so many companies require multiple approvals, both at thetime of purchasing and at the time of payment, is that they do not have a sufﬁ-cient degree of control over the authorization process. For example, there may not
33. 24 Accounts Payable Best Practicesbe any real check of authorization signatures when purchase requisitions are con-verted into purchase orders, nor might there be any required signature when pur-chase orders are issued to suppliers. In addition, the signature stamp used to signchecks may not be properly controlled. In all these cases, if there were tight controlover the authorization used, there would only be a need for a single authorization.For example, there should be an audit of all purchase orders to ensure that everyone of them has been signed, that every signature is by an authorized person, andthat the person signing is authorized to purchase what was ordered. This level ofcontrol requires continual internal audits to ensure that the control point is working,as well as continual follow-up and training of employees so that they know pre-cisely how the control system is supposed to work. Only by instituting this degreeof control over authorizations can a company reduce the number of approvals to aminimum. Using tight control over approvals that are given early in the accounts payableprocess results in a shorter processing cycle and fewer delays. Cost: Installation time:3–3 USE NEGATIVE ASSURANCE FOR INVOICE APPROVALSOne of the most signiﬁcant problems for the accounts payable staff is the contin-uing delay in receiving approvals of supplier invoices from authorized employeesthroughout the company. Invoices tend to sit on employee desks as low-priorityitems, resulting in constant reminders by the accounting staff to turn in docu-ments, as well as late payments and missed early-payment discounts. This universal problem can be avoided through the use of negative assur-ance. Under this approval system, invoice copies are sent to authorizing employ-ees, and are automatically paid when due unless the employees tell the accountspayable staff not to issue payment. By focusing only on those invoices that maybe incorrect, the accounting staff can process the vast majority of all submittedinvoices without cajoling anyone to submit an approved document. The process can be streamlined even further by digitizing an incominginvoice and e-mailing it to the authorizing employee. By doing so, employees canbe reached even when they are off-site, as long as they check their e-mail on aregular basis. By linking these transmissions to workﬂow software, the account-ing staff can designate how long an invoice can wait in a recipient’s e-mail boxbefore it is automatically routed to another authorized person, thereby ensuringthat someone will see every invoice and raise a red ﬂag if a potential problemexists. Cost: Installation time:
34. 3–4 Use Procurement Cards 253–4 USE PROCUREMENT CARDSConsider the number of work steps required to process a payment to a supplier:receiving paperwork, sorting and matching it, entering data into a computer, rout-ing invoices through the organization for approvals, expediting those invoicesthat have early-payment discounts, creating month-end accruals, setting up ﬁleson new suppliers in the computer and the ﬁling system, processing checks,obtaining check signatures, mailing payments, and ﬁling away check copies.Now consider how many purchases are so small that the cost of all these activitiesexceeds the cost of the purchase. In many instances, one-quarter or more of allpayment transactions fall into this category. The answer to this problem is not to ﬁnd a more efﬁcient way to process thesupplier invoices, but to change the way in which these items or services are pur-chased. Instead of using a purchase order or check to purchase something, oneshould instead use a procurement card. A procurement card, also known as a pur-chasing card, is simply a credit card that has a few extra features. The card isissued to those people who make frequent purchases, with instructions to keep onmaking the same purchases, but to do so with the card. This eliminates the multi-tude of supplier invoices by consolidating them all into a single monthly creditcard statement. As there is always a risk of having a user purchase extraneous items with acredit card, including cash advances or excessively expensive purchases, the pro-curement card adds a few features to control precisely what is purchased. For exam-ple, it can have a limitation on the total daily amount purchased, the total amountpurchased per transaction, or the total purchased per month. It may also limit pur-chases to a speciﬁc store or to only those stores that fall into a speciﬁc Std IndustryCode (SIC code) category, such as a plumbing supply store and nothing else. Thesebuilt-in controls effectively reduce the risk that procurement cards will be misused. Once the credit card statement arrives, it may be too jumbled, with hundredsof purchases, to determine the expense accounts to which all the items are to becharged. To help matters, a company can specify how the credit card statement isto be sorted by the credit card processing company; it can list expenses by thelocation of each purchase, by SIC code, or by dollar amount, as well as by date. Itis even possible to receive an electronic transmission of the credit card statementso that a company can do its own sorting of expenses. The purchasing limitationsand expense statement changes are the key differences between a regular creditcard and a procurement card. Another feature provided by those entities that offer procurement cards is“Level II” data; this includes a supplier’s minority supplier status, incorporatedstatus, and its tax identiﬁcation number. Another option to look into whenreviewing the procurement card option is the existence of “Level III” reporting,which includes such line-item details as quantities, product codes, productdescriptions, and freight and duty costs—in short, the bulk of the informationneeded to maintain a detailed knowledge of exactly what is being bought with a
35. 26 Accounts Payable Best Practicescompany’s procurement cards. Most major national suppliers of credit cards cansupply Level II or Level III data. The American Express Corporate Card has now expanded the range of usesto which its procurement card can be put, by allowing for the inclusion of manyrecurring business expenses, such as long-distance phone bills, Internet services,monthly parking, wireless phone bills, and ofﬁce security systems. By havingsuppliers send their bills to American Express, the accounts payable staff canconsolidate the quantity of check payments that it must make to a single pay-ment. American Express also provides a “Summary of Account” that itemizes allof the business expenses for which payments are being made—which providessufﬁcient proof for account auditing purposes. There are two ways to set up invoices to run through this procurement card.The ﬁrst approach is to refer to American Express’s list of existing companiesthat are willing to provide this service (which can be obtained from AmericanExpress). The list includes such organizations as AirTouch Cellular, GTE Wire-less, SkyTel Communications, MCI Worldcom, Sprint, America Online, BrinksHome Security, Fortune magazine, and the Boston Globe. If the company wantsto add a supplier to this list, it can contact American Express, which will call thesupplier to request a rebilling to it. One issue with this service is that the company must notify its suppliers if itsAmerican Express card number changes, since they will continue to send theirbillings to the old number until otherwise notiﬁed. Also, it may take a number ofmonths to line up a sufﬁcient number of suppliers to see a signiﬁcant reduction inthe number of checks issued by the accounts payable department. An alternative service is offered by MasterCard, through its Air Travel CardMasterCard. This procurement card splits airfare charges from all other chargesmade to the card and bills them directly to the company. This makes it easier forthe accounting department to segregate and analyze corporate air travel costs. Though this best practice may appear to be nirvana to many organizations,the following issues must be carefully considered in order to ensure that the pro-gram operates properly: • Card misuse. When procurement cards are handed out to a large number of employees, there is always the risk that someone will abuse the privilege and use up valuable company funds on incorrect or excessive purchases. There are several ways to either prevent this problem or to reduce its impact. One approach is to hand out the procurement cards only to the purchasing staff, who can use them to pay for items for which they would otherwise issue a purchase order; however, this does not address the large quantity of very small purchases that other employees may make, so a better approach is a gradual rollout of procurement cards to those employees who have shown a continuing pattern of making small purchases. Also, the characteristics of the procurement card itself can be altered, either by limiting the dollar amount of purchases per transaction, per time period, or even per department. One can
36. 3–4 Use Procurement Cards 27 also restrict the number of usages per day. An additional method for avoiding employee misuse of procurement cards is to have them sign an agreement that describes the sanctions that will be imposed when the cards are misused, which may include termination. Some mix of these solutions can mitigate the risk of procurement card abuse. • Spending on special items. The use of a procurement card can actually inter- fere with existing internal procedures for the purchase of such items, rendering those systems less efﬁcient. For example, an automated materials planning system for the inventory can issue purchase orders to suppliers with no manual intervention; adding inventory items to this situation that were purchased through a different methodology can interfere with the integrity of the data- base, requiring more manual reconciliation of inventory quantities. Thus, procurement cards are not always a good idea when buying inventory items. Also, capital purchases typically have to go through a detailed review and approval process before they are acquired; since a procurement card offers an easy way to buy smaller capital items, it represents a simple way to bypass the approval process. Thus, they are not a good choice for capital purchases. • Dealing with users of the old system. Some employees will not take to the new procurement card approach, if only because they are used to the old sys- tem. This can cause headaches for both the purchasing and accounting departments, since they must deal with both the old system and the new one in combination. It may be impossible to completely eliminate the old pur- chase order system in some cases (if only because of company politics), so a good alternative is to charge to those departments using the old system the fully burdened cost of each transaction that does not use a procurement card. Since this burdened cost, which includes the cost of all the processing steps noted at the beginning of this section, can easily exceed $100 per transac- tion, it becomes a very effective way to shift usage toward the procurement card solution. • Summarizing general ledger accounts. The summary statements that are received from the credit card processor will not contain as many expense line items as are probably already contained within a company’s general ledger (which tends to slice-and-dice expenses down into many categories). For example, the card statements may only categorize by shop supplies, ofﬁce supplies, and shipping supplies. If so, then it is best to alter the general ledger accounts to match the categories being reported through the procure- ment cards. This may also require changes to the budgeting system, which probably mirrors the accounts used in the general ledger. • Purchases from unapproved suppliers. A company may have negotiated favorable prices from a few select suppliers in exchange for making all of its purchases for certain items from them. It is a simple matter to ensure that purchases are made through these suppliers when the purchasing department is placed in direct control of the buying process. However, once purchases
37. 28 Accounts Payable Best Practices are put in the hands of anyone with a procurement card, it is much less likely that the same level of discipline will occur. Instead, purchases will be made from a much larger group of suppliers. Though not an easy issue to control, the holders of procurement cards can at least be issued a “preferred supplier yellow pages,” which lists those suppliers from whom they should be buy- ing. Their adherence to this list can be tracked by comparing actual pur- chases to the yellow pages list and giving them feedback about the issue. • Paying sales and use taxes. Occasionally, a state sales tax auditor will arrive on a company’s doorstep, demanding to see documentation that proves it has paid a sales tax on all items purchased. This is not easy to do when procure- ment cards are used, not only because there may be a multitude of poorly organized supplier receipts, but also because the sales tax noted on a credit card payment slip only shows the grand total sales tax paid, rather than the sales tax for each item purchased; this is an important issue, for some items are exempt from taxation, which will result in a total sales tax that appears to be too low in comparison to the total dollar amount of items purchased. One way to alleviate this problem is to obtain sales tax exemption certiﬁcates from all states with which a company does business; employees then present the sales tax exemption number whenever they make purchases, so that there is no doubt at all—no sales taxes have been paid. Then the accounting staff can calculate the grand total for the use tax (which is the same thing as the sales tax, except that the purchaser pays it to the state, rather than to the seller) to pay, and forward this to the appropriate taxing authority. An alter- native is to “double bag” tax payments, which means that the company pays the full use tax on all procurement card purchases, without bothering to spend the time ﬁguring out which sales taxes have already been paid. This is a safe approach from a tax audit perspective, and may not involve much additional cost if the total of all procurement card purchases is small. Yet another alternative is the reverse—to ignore the entire sales tax issue, and only confront it when audited; this decision is usually based on the level of risk tolerance of the controller or chief ﬁnancial ofﬁcer. Though the problems noted here must be addressed, one must understand thesigniﬁcance of the advantages of using procurement cards in order to see why theproblems are minor in relation to the possible beneﬁts. Here are the main attrac-tions of this best practice: • Fewer accounting transactions. Some of the accounts payable staff may be re- directed to other tasks, because the number of transactions will drop considerably. • Fewer invoice reviews and signatures. Managers no longer have to review a considerable number of invoices for payment approval, nor do they have to sign so many checks addressed to suppliers.
38. 3–5 Automate Three-Way Matching 29 • No cash advances. Whenever an employee asks for a cash advance, the account- ing staff must create a manual check for that person, record it in the accounting records, and ensure that it is paid back by the employee. This can be a very time- consuming process in proportion to the generally meager advances given to employees. A credit card can avoid this entire process, because employees can go to an automated teller machine and withdraw cash, which will appear in the next monthly card statement from the issuing bank—no check issuances required. Of course, this beneﬁt only applies if those employees needing cash advances are the same ones with access to a procurement card. • Fewer petty-cash transactions. If employees have procurement cards, they will no longer feel compelled to buy items with their own cash and then ask for a reimbursement from the company’s petty-cash fund. • Fewer purchasing transactions. A whole range of purchasing activities are reduced in volume, including contacting suppliers for quotes, creating and mailing purchase orders, resolving invoicing differences, and closing out orders. • Reduced supplier list. The number of active vendors in the purchasing database can be greatly reduced, which allows the buying staff to focus on better rela- tions with the remaining ones on the list. • Reduced mailroom volume. Even the mailroom will experience a drop in vol- ume, since there will be far fewer incoming supplier invoices and outgoing company checks. A procurement card is easy to implement (just hand it out to employees), thoughone should keep a signiﬁcant difﬁculty in mind: The banks that issue credit cardsmust expend extra labor to set up a procurement card for a company, since eachone must be custom-designed. Consequently, they prefer to issue procurementcards only to those companies that can show a signiﬁcant volume of credit cardbusiness—usually at least $1 million per year. This volume limitation makes itdifﬁcult for a smaller company to use procurement cards. This problem can bepartially avoided by using a group of supplier-speciﬁc credit cards. For example,a company can sign up for a credit card with its ofﬁce supply store, another with itsbuilding materials store, and another with its electrical supplies store. This resultsin a somewhat larger number of credit card statements per month, but they arealready sorted by supplier, so they are essentially a ‘‘poor man’s procurement card.” Cost: Installation time:3–5 AUTOMATE THREE-WAY MATCHINGThe three-way matching process is a manual one at most companies; that is, aclerk matches a supplier invoice to a company purchase order and a receiving
39. 30 Accounts Payable Best Practicesdocument in order to ensure that the correct quantities (and costs) ordered are thesame ones received and billed. This is a painfully slow and inefﬁcient process,given the large number of documents involved, as well as the startling number ofexceptions that nearly always arise. There are two ways to solve the problem. One is to dispense with three-waymatching entirely, which requires considerable reengineering of the accountspayable process, as well as retraining of the receiving staff and even of suppliers.This process was described in detail in the ‘‘Pay Based on Receiving ApprovalOnly” section earlier in this chapter. Though the most elegant solution, it alsorequires the most work to implement. The second solution requires some software changes that may already be avail-able in the existing software package, with minimal changes to employee proce-dures, while still resulting in efﬁciency improvements (though not on the scale ofthe ﬁrst solution). This best practice involves keeping the matching process in itscurrent form, but using the computer system to perform the matching work. Inorder to automate three-way matching, all three documents must be entered into thecomputer system. This is easy for purchase orders, since most companies alreadyenter purchase orders directly into the computer in order to track purchase ordersthrough the manufacturing system. The next-easiest document to enter is thereceiving document, which can be either a bill of lading or a packing slip. To do so,there should be a computer terminal at the receiving dock that is linked to the mainaccounting database so that all information entered at the dock is centrally stored.Finally, the supplier invoice must be entered into the computer system—line byline. It is common enough to enter the supplier’s invoice number and dollar amountinto the computer system, but automated matching requires the complete entry ofall line items, quantities, and costs into the system, which can be a considerablechore. Once this information is in the accounting database, the computer systemautomatically matches the three documents (usually using the purchase order num-ber as the index), compares all line items, and presents a summary of the matcheddocuments to the accounting staff, showing any variances between the matcheddocuments. The accounting staff can then scan the information and decide if thevariances require further analysis or if they can be paid as is. This best practiceautomates an existing manual process without a large number of changes. When deciding to use this best practice, it is useful to compare the savingsfrom eliminating manual matching to the added cost of keying all the documentsinto the central database. There may also be an expense associated with installingthe matching software in the system, though it is usually an integral part of themore advanced accounting packages. Low-end accounting packages do not nor-mally contain the automated matching feature. Cost: Installation time:

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Accounting best practices

Accounting best practices

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