What should you do before the unclaimed property auditors show up? Don't stand there like a sitting duck. "Perform a preliminary audit yourself," says Will Yancey. By conducting a walk-through ahead of time, you can determine what supporting documents are both available and retrievable; you'll be able to identify potential exposure areas. I'm looking forward to our Unclaimed Property seminar later this week in Chicago. This advice is just a tiny piece of the insights Yancey, Brooke Spotswood, and Tracey Reid will share.

As part of the price of admission, attendees will receive via e-mail, a due diligence chart for the 50 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Guam. This is for 23 different payment types. Those not attending can also get it. The price is $179. Annual updates are available each August for $99. Anyone ordering now will receive the updates in 2008 at no additional charge.

We also have an Unclaimed Property Policy Manual for $99. Delivered as a Word document you can customize it for your own operations. Both these fine pieces of intelligence were put together by Tracey Reid, president of Reid Unclaimed Property. If you would like to receive our Unclaimed Property brochure which describes these products in greater detail and includes an offer for the chart, manual, and our Unclaimed Property Best Practice CD please e-mail publisher@ap-now.com with the words Unclaimed Property brochure in the subject line.

Apparently there was an extra space in an e-mail address in last week's piece on our Spring Journal. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. This is the publication being published on May 1. It has 24-information packed pages with 5 articles, 5 accounts payable book excerpts and 5 shorts, all to be published in the fifth month of the year. Paid subscribers will receive this as an expanded May issue.

You can order the issue online or download the flyer and use that to pay by credit card or check.

The following is a sneak peak from our Spring Journal/May issue.

Five Reasons Why You May Not Be Getting Promoted & What to Do about It

It happens to most people at some point in their career. You're clearly doing a fabulous job and yet you can't seem to get promoted. And, if that job is in accounts payable, it seems that the odds of falling into that hardly-ever-gets-promoted group skyrocket. What's the problem here? We've wondered about this for years and talked to several human resource professionals to get a handle on why this happens in general and, more to the point, why does it happen so often to hard-working accounts payable professionals? Assuming you are doing an outstanding job but are still waiting for that promotion offer, consider the following five issues.

1) You're not visible enough. If you're one of those professionals who keeps your head down, works hard, and never ever brags about your accomplishments, you fall into this group. Alas, if you're waiting for someone to realize your efforts and reward you accordingly, you are probably in for a long wait. There is a fine line between braggarts and those who appropriately let management know what they've been doing-and if you want to get promoted, you're going to have to figure out how to navigate those choppy self-promotional waters.

The rest of this article appears in the Spring Journal, which doubles as the May issue of Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow.

I received the following note from a reader and I have to confess. I do not have a good solution. She wrote, "How does one go about auditing cell phone use? We currently don't do an audit and can't figure out how to do one. Even if the employee keeps a detailed record of their business and personal calls, how do we know that the person they indicated is "business" is actually 'business' and not 'personal'?"

Now if you are thinking, "why does she care?" read on. This is an IRS issue. The reader sent along an electronic newsletter which noted, "The prevailing wisdom has been that the IRS requires not-for-profits to have employees let us know the amount of personal calls they made in a given month and then make some form of reimbursement for personal calls. In several recent audits at major universities, the IRS has set the bar higher than we could have imagined." The newsletter included the following link, which details IRS requirements in this area. http://www.irs.gov/govt/fslg/article/0,,id=167154,00.html

We'd like to hear from readers who are addressing this issue. As always, we'll send a synopsis of all responses to everyone who responds. Please send your solutions to publisher@ap- now.com and we thank you in advance.

You are not going to believe this-until you read this entire note. When employees leave the company, make sure that you delete their unused voice mail boxes as quickly as possible. Why? "Because," says Mark Evans, president of BottaBoom Consulting, an industry expert, "the hacker takes control of the voice mail box and records the word yes." Think this can't hurt you? Read on.

He then places a third-party call and instructs the outside operator to call the number of your departed employee's old mail box. The operator says, "Do you accept third-party charges for Mr. Jones's call?," and the voice mail box answers, "Yes," as programmed. Evans willing shares his considerable expertise in two places. First, he served as the telecom expert for my upcoming Fraud in Accounts Payable book, to be published by John Wiley in August. He will also address these issues at an AP Now Webinar on June 26th. This is one event you might want to invite your controller and/or CFO to attend.

There's just one week left to sign up for the Internal Controls webinar next Tuesday. We're very much looking forward to hearing Diane Gee's advice, based on over thirty years of in-the-trenches experience. Diane is very much in demand as she is both informative and entertaining. Although she claims to be "older than dirt," her advice is very much leading edge.

Toning Up Purchase to Pay to Attain Touchless Processing
The Millennium Knightsbridge - 18th -20 June 2007
Contact enquire@sharedserviceslink.com or call +44 207 359 5355

There's still time to enter our Thank-Heavens-Tax- Time-Has-Passed Contest. See last week's issue for details. New subscribers who don't have last week's issue should feel free to drop me a note at marys@ap- now.com for the details. And regular readers please don't forget to forward this to anyone with an interest in payment issues.

Thanks for listening,

Mary Schaeffer
Editorial Director
Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow