As I work my way through the material I'm collecting on duplicate payments and the paper invoice comments, one stark fact stands out. Good master vendor file practices will become even more important in the future-if we want to minimize the number of duplicate payments and make fraud difficult to perpetrate against our employers. As most readers know, the tedious part of regularly cleaning up the master vendor file is a crucial part of that process.

In two weeks, Rich Lanza will show us how to do just that using Excel. He's a gentleman so he's going to let me talk about best practices relating to the master vendor file first. I promise not to take more than 10 minutes and let him have the lion's share of the time.

In response to the paper invoice issue we've been discussing the last two weeks, I received a note from a reader on a related issue.

He writes: "We have a internal conflict where one of our operations offices in another state receiving paper invoices refuses to forward them to the payables department and will only scan them to the payables department. We do not agree with this procedure. We are not convinced that we are receiving everything and what we do get is not totally legible. We think that the solution may be to see if the vendor can send them electronically. Then the vendor would be creating the document directly from their software and they should be very legible.

They should be able to e-mail to two addresses, thus the other office could still get the invoice for their purposes. Our system does not permit duplicate invoice numbers which should mitigate the risk of a double payment."

He wants to know if others have encountered this issue and, if so, how they handled it. Please send your comments to publisher@ap-now.com They will be included with the other comments (anonymously) and shared with all respondents.

I thought you might be interested to know that we will combine all the comments, the articles written based on this information and one or two other articles into a white paper. The paper will go to all respondents and paid subscribers of the print newsletter - at no cost. It will be available for sale on our Web site in about one month.

Best Practices to Avoid Check Request Fraud and Duplicate Payments

Ahhh…check requests, that ubiquitous form used to request payments for all sorts of things. Theoretically a solution (by making it easy to request a payment when an invoice is missing) in reality it can create numerous headaches for accounts payable, not to mention causing duplicate payments by the boatload. Here’s a look at some of the problems surrounding check requests and a few suggestions on avoiding them.

Background

Check requests are used in most organizations to request payment when an invoice is not available or was never provided. Ideally, there should be backup documentation augmenting the check request and providing details regarding the payment amount, the payee, and the reason for the payment. Since most payments made on check request forms will not go through the rigorous three-way match in accounts payable, the documentation supporting the check request is of utmost importance.

The one exception to this is those organizations that require a check request for every single payment. This is not a best practice, although some organizations with unique industry or regulatory requirements might find it necessary to go this route.

Where Check Requests Cause Problems

Check requests forms are often used to accommodate rush check requests. These are one- time payments made to vendors outside the normal invoice submission process. Typically this happens when a payment is late and the upset vendor threatens to put the organization on credit hold.

The rest of this article appears in the August issue of Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow. If you are considering a subscription – which of course, we heartily encourage – you might want to get it in before the September 1, 2008 price increase.

We believe this intelligence is important not only to those looking for a job today but to every reader. By knowing what skill sets are in demand they will be better able to position themselves-whether it be for a promotion from within or one on the outside.

Please note: Job listings tend to be short lived on the Web. So, if you're reading this a while beyond August 2008 the links may no longer work.

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To recommend this ezine to another accounts payable or accounting professional, simply forward the entire newsletter or use the tiny link at the bottom. He or she will appreciate it.

• Using Excel to Clean Up Your Master Vendor File: A Step by Step Approach
• Links to Our Duplicate Payment Obliteration webinar series - now all on one page
• Take the Duplicate Payment Survey
• Order John Wiley & Sons books at a 15% discount (Wiley link bottom of page)
• The Future of Accounts Payable (bottom of the page)

The information for all our duplicate payment and information reporting Webinars has been posted on our website. So, please, if you have a spare moment, check out our Fall audio conference/webinar schedule. Until next week,

Thanks for listening.
Mary Schaeffer
Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow, a CRYSTALLUS, Inc. publication

CRYSTALLUS, Inc, publisher of Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow, is a woman-owned business and is registered as a Federal Government CCR vendor.