I have a lot of admiration for the folks that process travel and entertainment expense reports at their organizations. In many cases it is a thankless job. Some managers sign anything put in front of them and then feign ignorance when fraud or outrageous policy violations are uncovered. This was one of the issues discussed on last week's Travel & Entertainment Fraud Prevention & Detection Webinar. I was joined by InterplX's Chuck Buckner and Haas and Rohm's Craig Stuart.

Stuart had some excellent advice in this regard. He pointed out that in addition to the normal controls his organization required a second approval on expense reports over a set dollar limit. This puts two people on the line-and my guess is the first approver is likely to pay a little closer attention.
CDs of this event are available. As mentioned last week, we will include a copy of the Travel & Entertainment Best Practices book with the CD at no additional cost. This is a $60 hard cover book published by John Wiley & Sons.

I feel that it's always instructive to see how other organizations solve a problem, especially if it's one that I am currently experiencing. In fact, sometimes upon reading about the solution I realize that I can fix something I thought was unfixable. We'd like to collect case studies from readers for one of our fall issues. Each case study submitted should show a problem with a solution. The solution does not have to be complete, because let's face it, some problems are never completely solved.

The problems can be high tech or not. They can revolve around staffing, dealing with management, low-tech issues, or whatever you see appropriate. We are most interested in the content not the writing. We have a top-flight copy editor here who makes everyone look great. Should your piece be selected, you'll receive a byline (if you want) along with five copies of the newsletter. The decision to include material or not is solely ours. We hope to get as many in as possible-and will expand the issue if we get enough great examples.

We look forward to your case studies. Although we have an August 15 deadline, if we receive numerous submissions we'll close it earlier, so the sooner the better. Of course, we will give you two weeks notice in this ezine, so please do not let this stop you. Use your imagination we want a range of problems. The only thing we ask is no blatant sales pitches for your favorite vendor and a word count limit between 450- 1350. In fact, we ask that a product be mentioned no more than two times by brand name. Please address any questions on this issue to publisher@ap- now.com and send your articles to the same address with the words Case Study Issue in the subject line.

There's a little more than six weeks to go before we go to Chicago for our two seminars, one on Unclaimed Property and the other on "Stopping the Cash Leakage in the P2P Function." We were able to get a reduced hotel rate for the night before each event. However, that room rate is only good for less than a month. So, if you have not made your reservation, please do.

As mentioned we launched our AP Now blog last week. The techies worked most of the week fine tuning it and the registration feature is now available. You must register in order to post. The registration link is the first link on the bottom right under the Meta section. I hope you'll join me in answering questions and venting about AP issues that bother you.

And speaking of venting, did you see that Sharper Image filed for bankruptcy protection? That's not what has me hot under the collar. If they're not making money, I guess they have no choice. However, and this is a biggie, at least in my book-they announced they are not going to honor previously issued gift cards. If I had given one of their gift cards as a present, I would be major-league annoyed. But, that is not for this venue. It did get me thinking about the Unclaimed Property issues and my colleagues, Brooke Spotswood and Tracey Reid, experts in this arena, chimed in. You can read what they had to say on the blog.

I also did a little research on the moving expense issue and posted some links that you might find helpful if you have to handle these expenses in accounts payable. Plus, there is information about an ugly rumor, which I'm afraid, is true. You can read about these and other issues on AP Now's blog.

If you're concerned about your overall information reporting processes and want to start implementing Best Practices before corporate reporting becomes a reality, you might want to join us on March 11 as Carol Kassem shares her considerable expertise in this arena.

Several readers have asked if we are going to publish any more pieces on the Amazon Short program. These are the 49 cent pieces Amazon makes available for download. Right now, we have three posted: An Accounts Payable Game Plan; Master Vendor File and Invoices. All are in the Top 25 Best Short Sellers as we write this. There are currently about 3,000 Shorts in the program.

We were just getting ready to put together another piece when I received a note from Amazon saying they were revamping the program and would not be taking new submissions for a month or two.
As soon as the program reopens we will submit a piece. It takes a bit of time to work through the Amazon editorial review program so we do not expect to have anything new in that venue until the summer at the earliest. But, we will submit a piece as soon as the program reopens - and we'll let you know as soon as it is available.

I'm writing this just before I get on the plane to head out to US Bank's conference where I'll join Mike Lori to talk about fraud. I plan on attending as many of the sessions as I can and hope to have some highlights next week-and if I can make all the technology work, I'll blog from the conference. You can look for the highlights on the AP Now blog. Thanks for listening.

Mary Schaeffer
Editorial Director
Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow