Accounts Payable Best Practices for Your Florida Business

More than 70 percent of self-employed people do their own accounting. While this is admirable, most of them don’t understand how to properly take care of their payables.

Are you a Florida business owner trying to manage your accounts payable duties? Here are some best practices to help you streamline your processes.

Shift To Accepting Digital Invoices

Many companies have the ability to move to a paperless system. They will be happy to offer you digital invoices, which will save them the cost of paper and postage. This step can strengthen supplier relationships, and you can streamline your payment processing.

Accepting digital invoices is a step toward automating data entry using data capture tools. Invoices can be electronically routed to the right person for approval, reducing the time spent moving paperwork around the office.

Centralize Vendor Information

When you have vendor information in one place, it’s easier to keep it updated. Give your team online access to the data so they don’t have to keep a duplicate set of supplier contact information. This will save them time and reduce confusion in your workspace.

Limit the number of people allowed to make specific changes to the file. Adding a new vendor or supplier is one example where you must be very careful. Your supplier master file must be secured as it is an area where fraud can often occur.

With a centralized database, you can allow suppliers limited access to their data. That allows them to update their contact information. Ensure to establish system-level controls to limit access to trusted parties. 

Outsource Your Payables

Many business owners hesitate to outsource their bookkeeping because they are watching costs. Outsourcing can save you money because you don’t have to hire someone and train them to do your books.

Sterling Tax and Accounting have a team of professionals who will create a customized solution to meet your accounts payable processing needs. You can access your data anytime because they use web-based applications.

Automate Your Payment Processing

Manual invoice processing is a tedious task with many steps. This leaves a lot of room for errors and potential duplicate payments. Automating any part of your accounts payable workflows will save you time and, ultimately, money.

There are five main steps to processing an invoice for payment.

• Receive and verify invoice
• Match to purchase orders or packing slips 
• Coding and approval
• Data entry
• Payment processing

When invoices are digital, it’s easier to automate the steps. Work with your suppliers to shift to electronic invoicing.

Optical character readers can scan the data and enter it into your accounting system using a defined set of rules for each supplier or type of expense. Payments can be processed by hand, which takes a lot of time. You can use software that prints checks in a batch.

Streamline Your Accounts Payable

When it comes to taking care of your accounts payable, you deserve the Sterling standard. We provide virtual bookkeeping services that give you the freedom to grow your business.

Schedule an appointment with Sterling Tax and Accounting today. We put our clients first.