Articles

16 Aug

Posted at 21:08h in Article - Compliance, Articles, Latest News

COVID-19 has made it harder for organizations to focus on third-party risks. So says a new report on the effects of COVID-19 on risk and compliance. The pandemic has resulted in "more opportunities for criminals to defraud consumers and companies." As the pandemic seized everyone's attention, a consequence was relaxed pressure to sustain compliance and prevention efforts compared to 2019. Reorienting and enabling work by remote workers, not compliance, was top of mind. Meanwhile a host of bad characters sought to exploit the disruptions. Among the report's findings: 60 percent of 2,900 respondents agree that the pandemic forced them to take shortcuts with know-your-customer and due diligence checks. In the specific area of sanction screening, there is good news and bad. The good news is that 40 percent of respondents actually made sanctions screening a greater priority during Covid. Yet, in the broader picture, 56 percent admit that they “have not fully managed risks related to sanction screening.” The report points out that while COVID-19 has been disruptive, compliance gaps were a problem well before the pandemic. For example, a 2019 risk survey found that 49 percent of third-party relationships had been subjected to due diligence checks, compared to 44 percent in this...

02 Aug

Posted at 20:43h in Article - Compliance, Articles, Latest News

IRS Adds Multi-factor Authentication As is widely known, organizations with 250 or more 1099s must file them electronically. To do so, they first must register on the IRS FIRE (Filing Information Returns Electronically) System site and apply for a Transmitter Control Code (TCC), which is necessary to file 1009s and other tax forms via the FIRE System. To obtain a TCC, they complete IRS form 4419. Now, the IRS is adding greater security to its Information Return Application TCC. The improved security will involve multi-factor authentication (MFA). The IRS plans to deploy the new system on September 26th of this year for new registrants. It’s a result of the 2019 Taxpayer First Act, which requires the IRS to improve its taxpayer service and modernize its technology, including greater security. In the FIRE application process, new registrants will have to authenticate their identities as they create a new account through the IRS Secure Access Account. Then, they access the Information Returns (IR) Application for TCC. The new application for a TCC replaces IRS form 4419. Keep an eye on IRS.gov and fire.irs.gov. Initially, this newly added layer of security is only for new registrants. However, existing registered filers will gain enhanced protection next year. The...

06 Jul

Posted at 14:34h in Article - Compliance, Articles, Latest News

The U.S. government has a problem called the tax gap. The tax gap is the difference between total taxpayers' liability and the actual amount of taxes paid. It is tax revenue that should be collected according to the tax code but is not. The gap comprises unfiled taxes, unreported income and underpaid taxes. The IRS can recover some of that. The net tax gap is the portion that is not recovered through enforcement or late payments. The IRS currently reports that the gross tax gap for tax years 2011-2013 was $441 billion. (According to the IRS, “Estimating the tax gap is inherently challenging and requires assessing the merits of alternative methods, assumptions, and data sources.”) Expecting to collect $60 billion of that ultimately, the IRS projects that the net tax gap for the period would be $381 billion. A Treasury model extrapolates from those figures to project a gross gap in 2019 of $584 billion. Supposing the IRS collects $80 billion, it leaves a net gap of $500 billion. To be clear, that's 500,000 million! Even for Washington D.C., that’s a lot of money. The IRS wants to close that gap. The Tax Gap and 1099s A large part of that gap is unreported...

22 Jun

Posted at 17:26h in Article - Compliance, Article - Relations, Articles, Latest News

Managing vendor information entails risk. The vendor master file is the key to vendor payments. Errors in the vendor master can lead to costly mistakes, and the master file is a prime target for fraud. There is also a risk of non-compliance with particular government tax, sanction and exclusion programs. Further, some of the vendor information, such as social security numbers and bank account numbers, is sensitive and subject to theft and exploitation. Policies, processes including internal controls, technical protocols and encryption, and staff awareness and understanding are all necessary to mitigate the risks. The breadth of vendor information and vendor onboarding represents a challenge to risk management. Guardianship of the processes and information falls to frontline staff—most commonly accounts payable staff. All this raises two questions. The first is: Does your organization have adequate controls? The second is: Do the people responsible for managing vendor information understand the control policies, their reasons and do they follow them? Like many things, what looks simple on the surface is not. The list of controls and precautions is longer than one might suppose. How well does your organization manage the risks associated with vendor information management? Financial Operations Networks (FON) wants to help you find...

07 Jun

Posted at 19:40h in Article - Onboarding, Articles, Latest News

Criminals Steal $650,000 from Non-profit Organization. It was a heartbreaking discovery. A non-profit organization paid out an amount equating to 26 percent of its annual revenue over a month in what the organization thought was legitimate project payments. When the executive director later spoke to the group that was to hire architects and engineers for a low-income housing project, she expected confirmation that things were underway. But the contractor had not received any of the payments made—only an email from the non-profit the previous month stating that it had to delay payment. The three payments had gone elsewhere. By the time the executive director reported the loss to the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s office would not investigate. The trail was already cold, and the amount was relatively small. After all, the FBI received 19,300 such reports in 2020. The non-profit managed to recover only a pittance remaining in a shell account in a bank in another state. How did it happen? The bookkeeper, in this case, a third-party serving the non-profit, was the initial victim of business email compromise (BEC). Once the hackers had gotten into the bookkeeper’s email system, they infiltrated existing email chains. Then they gathered the information needed to imitate...

24 May

Posted at 20:24h in Article - Compliance, Articles, Latest News

Vendor onboarding best practice includes getting a vendor's tax identification number and classification on a W-9 or equivalent W-9 upfront with other vendor information. But what do you do if the vendor fails to give you that information? You're going to need it. Ask Again Here are steps to take. The first is to ask the vendor again. Be sure to send a copy of the W-9--it's part of your responsibility, even though the vendor can easily download the form from https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf. Document your solicitations so you can prove your attempts to the IRS. Let the vendor know in your W-9 solicitation that you will have to withhold 24 percent (currently) and remit to the IRS unless the vendor provides a valid tax identification number. Refer them here: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc307. That should motivate them to comply. A few bad-faith vendors out there might avoid responding, or they may reply with inaccurate information. Whether you use it directly or have a third party do it for you, the IRS TIN Match program will determine whether the vendor's TIN is valid. Using TIN Match, you can uncover incorrect TINs before 1099 filing rather than when the IRS sends you a CP2100.  Note that you can also...

11 May

Posted at 01:36h in Article - Compliance, Articles, Latest News

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of Treasury has been busy in 2021. Voice of America catalogs new targeted sanctions imposed on a host of individuals by the Biden Administration since January 2021. Targets include individuals in Russia for interference with the U.S. election, Myanmar generals involved in the overthrow of the government there, Saudi Arabians involved in the killing of a journalist, China for undermining civil rights in Hong Kong and its human rights abuses against China’s Uyghur minority. Those are the headliners. There are more. “What does that have to do with me?” you ask. “We don’t deal with North Korea!” Well, U.S. Government prohibitions go beyond the "headliners," and companies without compliance procedures can get caught unaware. There are many individuals and entities on OFAC's SDN list. The targeted sanctions list fills 1,500 pages. The prohibition against dealing with the sanctioned parties applies to all “U.S. persons,” whether you are a civilian individual working overseas for a U.S. Army (recently fined $5,000), or your company’s name is “Amazon.” Those working in procure-to-pay encounter risk every day, and compliance issues are a fact of life. Among these is sanction compliance. OFAC maintains and enforces U.S. sanctions. Its...

27 Apr

Posted at 22:12h in Article - Self-Service, Articles, Latest News

Significant events cause change. Sometimes they produce innovation. They can drive new legislation, which has its own effects. Many times, events boost changes already underway, particularly in terms of applying technology. The 21st century has already seen several large-scale events that have impacted business. At the start, accounting scandals were underway at Enron and WorldCom that would bring about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. SOX, aimed at publicly traded corporations, impacted every organization. Nearly simultaneously, the terrorist attacks on 9/11 led, among other things, not only to a surge in disaster recovery and business continuity planning but also to the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act. The attacks had led to the grounding of all planes for several days. That caused a major disruption to the country's financial transactions. Checks sat on the ground in the cargo compartments of aircraft. In the days following 9/11, the Fed holdover became an estimated $47 billion, compared to the usual several hundred million. Check truncation, already in the works, got the boost needed to become law two years later. In 2008 the global financial crisis damaged worldwide economies and, in the U.S., led to the Dodd-Frank Act, which dramatically increased regulation of banks. Following on bank...

12 Apr

Posted at 16:35h in Article - Self-Service, Articles, Latest News

In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, the slow character Dogberry has no idea what “tedious” means when the governor of Messina applies the label to him.[1]  Ask your P2P staff, however, and they’ll tell you what “tedious” means: Answering “Has our invoice been paid?” for the hundredth time this month! A central challenge in providing good “customer service” to your vendors includes managing the volume of inquiries. The bulk of those inquiries, upwards of 80 percent, are the same few, straightforward questions. They are about invoice receipt, approval or payment status—easy enough questions to answer with a quick look in the system. But of course, stopping what you are doing to look it up can be a frustrating interruption. While setting aside a block of hours each week to do nothing but look up and reply can be, well, tedious. Despite Dogberry’s good intention, no one particularly enjoys such tediousness bestowed upon them. In the book The AI Advantage, Thomas Davenport writes, "Many human employees don't really enjoy answering the same questions over and over, so they might not mind losing this responsibility." He's talking about applying technology to handle repetitive tasks in the realm of customer interaction. The same applies to vendor interactions....

Stop Calls and Emails, Enhance
Service and Increase Profit!

InvoiceInfo saves labor hours and cost by helping suppliers and internal staff easily and instantly get answers online to their invoice-payment questions.

If you are like many finance leaders today, you are being challenged to reduce costs more quickly. InvoiceInfo delivers real bottom-line results almost immediately, allowing you to deploy your customer service staff to focus on more productive, bottom-line oriented tasks.

Let us show you how InvoiceInfo's vendor self-service portal can help your organization eliminate invoice inquiry emails and calls while enhancing service to your accounts payable customers.

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Get Up and Running Quickly and Seamlessly

InvoiceInfo and VendorInfo are standalone applications that can be up and running in as little as two weeks, with little or no IT resources required.

The faster your online portal is up and running, the sooner you will start reaping the benefits. InvoiceInfo and VendorInfo are dedicated solely to helping AP and procurement departments slash the time and expense of servicing vendors, while improving customer service for their suppliers.

InvoiceInfo and VendorInfo are simple solutions with big results. They are easy to implement and easy to use. Here’s how one customer described the process: “You give vendors a URL, provide instructions about what they need to know and tell them to go use it.” It really is that easy.

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Improve Productivity with a Self-Service Solution

For most organizations, deploying a technology solution is a significant investment, and like most investments, the decision point ultimately comes down to the expected return on that investment.

According to a recent benchmark study by The Accounts Payable Network, 60% of AP customer service calls are from vendors while 40% are from internal customers. Vendor issues actually make up even more of the AP call volume than the 60% identified. Many times when a vendor has an issue, the vendor contacts their buyer or purchasing representative, who in turn contacts AP. Even though the call comes from an internal customer, the question originated with the vendor.

Vendor calls affect productivity in your organization exponentially. When vendors call the requisitioner, they are affecting that person’s productivity. Your internal customer’s productivity shrinks when fielding the vendor’s call and again when making the follow up call to AP and getting back to the vendor. Finally, AP’s productivity suffers as a result of the internal customer’s call, the payment status research and the follow-up communication.

With a minimal investment of IT time and talent, you can start reducing customer service calls and expense in a matter of weeks. In addition, you improve vendor relations since you are giving your vendors what they want — answers to their questions immediately — a win-win for everyone involved!

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Easy and Economical Solution to Serve Vendors Around the World

InvoiceInfo can help you provide best-in-class customer service to your vendors around the world at a fraction of the cost.

Many organizations today have offices and operations throughout the world and are dealing with many time zones, different languages, and in some cases multiple ERP systems. InvoiceInfo currently supports different languages and can easily work with multiple ERP systems in different locations.

The key to good customer service is to provide the information that the customer wants when they want it. Whether your customer is a vendor waiting for a payment or a colleague that needs information on payment status, they want their information right away. If your organization has vendors and offices in other countries, they can be challenging and expensive to serve. But, with InvoiceInfo, your international vendors and internal customers can access the information they need when they need it.

With InvoiceInfo, you won’t have to staff your customer service team with 24-hour coverage in multiple languages to provide high-quality customer service around the world.

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Enhance AP’s Role As a Strategic Partner

Learn how InvoiceInfo can help AP do more with less while continuously improving productivity and bottom-line results.

Many automation technologies such as scanning, workflow, e-invoicing, ACH, and electronic invoicing require significant investments of money, time and talent, making it difficult to get buy-in from upper management. Not InvoiceInfo!

If your goal for your AP department is to reduce costs quickly, call or email us today to learn more about how InvoiceInfo can help you achieve this goal through a quick, inexpensive and easy implementation of a vendor self-service portal.

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Enhance Vendor Relationships

InvoiceInfo helps suppliers’ AR departments with simple and convenient access to invoice payment status online at a cost savings for all involved.

It may seem that the organization paying the vendor should hold all the cards in the relationship. But sometimes the opposite is true. Past-due payments and customer service perceptions can harm supplier relationships and disrupt the supply chain.

Your vendors and vendor relationship managers are living in a dynamic, fast-paced environment, so when invoice information is required, it is needed quickly and expected to be of high quality. With InvoiceInfo, your suppliers get answers to invoice inquiries real time, 24/7 with no need to leave messages and wait for responses. Studies show that confidence in data increases when suppliers access invoice and payment information themselves.

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Give Procurement and Buyers the Tool They
Need to Respond to Vendors Quickly

Not only can InvoiceInfo be used by suppliers to learn the status of invoice payments, it can also be used internally within your organization.

In addition to reducing calls from vendors regarding invoice status, you can also reduce internal emails and calls from co-workers wanting to learn the status of invoice payment, and save time and effort and boost efficiency and productivity across the organization. Studies show that 40% of AP customer service calls are from internal customers. Many of these are from requisitioners who have received calls or emails from the supplier checking on payment status. These calls are often more expensive for the company because the internal staff member has taken the call or received an email from the supplier, contacted AP for the payment status and had to return the call or email the supplier.

By providing the vendor with a convenient and credible online option to get the answers it needs regarding payment status, you can eliminate multiple calls/emails between the vendor and the requisitioner saving time and money.

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Eliminate Difficult Vendor Calls and See
Productivity and Staff Morale Soar

Reduce invoice payment inquiries and “promote” your vendor service team to more satisfying and profit-producing tasks.

By sharply reducing inbound calls and emails regarding receipt and payment status that your AP staff must handle individually, your staff can focus their efforts on more productive, cost-saving activities, learn new tasks, feel more confident and boost their careers.

According to a recent American Express survey on customer service, more than one-third of consumers have lost their temper with a customer service professional in the past year. Of those who lost their temper, three in ten “hung up the phone.” Your staff will no longer have to deal with difficult collectors who can be upsetting and disruptive. Your staff will feel that their time and talents are being put to better use and will feel better about themselves, their jobs and their organization. Reducing these calls can be a real productivity and morale booster for your AP department!

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Simplify and Streamline Vendor Onboarding

According to Price Waterhouse Coopers, the average organization spends about $20 in labor to file each paper document, approximately $120 in labor searching for each misfiled document and $220 in re-creation of a document.

Wouldn’t it be great to have all your W-9’s, W-8’s and other registration documents completed online and instantly filed online for easy access when needed? With Vendor Self-Service Onboarding Module, VendorInfo, you can onboard your new vendors in one convenient location and eliminate paperwork and hassles.

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Verify the Accuracy of Vendor Information and Stay in Compliance with IRS and Treasury Department Regulations

Government regulators are increasing the complexity of regulations and penalties associated with vendor-related non-compliance.

Penalties for incorrect 1099’s have more than doubled in recent years. Over the last several years, OFAC has levied more than $1 billion in fines against American companies or subsidiaries that did business with restricted businesses, organizations and individuals on its SDN list. In addition to fining these companies, the Treasury Department posts the names of infringing organizations along with fines paid.

VendorInfo Onboarding Module verifies the accuracy of vendor information and helps protect your organization by avoiding embarrassing penalties and fines.

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