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Accounts Payable Best Practices
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age is especially useful, since employees in outlying locations or who are traveling
can use the system at any location where they can access the Internet; moreover,
it requires no software installation on anyone’s computers. Also, Web-based soft-
ware can be updated easily, whereas client-server systems require updates on
individual user computers. Further, if someone steals an employee’s computer,
there is no time or expense information stored on it, since this information is sub-
mitted directly through the Internet to a different storage location. Examples of
such packages are made by Captura Software, Concur Technologies, Extensity,
Inc., Acceleron, IBM, Oracle, Peoplesoft, and SAP.
Cost: Installation time:

3–15 ELIMINATE CASH ADVANCES FOR EMPLOYEE TRAVEL

Many employees with few funds on hand will come to the accounts payable
department asking for cash advances so they can go on company-mandated trips.
By doing so, the department may be handing over more cash than the employee
really needs, which can make it difficult to collect any unspent cash. In addition,
employees who have already been paid for their expenditures have no incentive
to submit an expense report, especially when the report may reveal that they must
pay some of the original advance back to the company. The usual result is a pro-
longed process of asking employees for expense reports, while the amount of the
original advance remains, incorrectly, on the accounting books as a prepaid asset.
This problem is eliminated by denying cash travel advances. However, this is
much easier said than done. In reality, many employees simply cannot afford to
be out-of-pocket on any company-related expenses. If so, the company can pur-
chase many of their expenses for them, such as airline tickets. Also, such an
employee can travel with another employee who has the financial wherewithal to
absorb cash expenditures for both employees. As a last resort, the company can
also issue company credit cards to employees, though this raises the risk of having
the cards used for noncompany purchases. Through some combination of these
actions, a company can reduce its reliance on cash advances to employees.
Cost: Installation time:

3–16 LINK CORPORATE TRAVEL POLICIES TO AN AUTOMATED
EXPENSE REPORTING SYSTEM

The typical set of travel policies used by a company is quite detailed—thou shalt
not charge to the company the cost of movies, clothing, first-class upgrades, and
so on. However, the overburdened accounts payable staff has little time to review
expense reports for these items, much less to then create variance reports and