Accounts Payable & QuickBooks

Internal Controls, Accounts Payable & QuickBooks

Internal controls are processes that are used to protect an organization from unethical behavior, theft of money, theft of proprietary information, and other theft.  The importance of internal controls has grown over the last ten years due to necessity and awareness of internal problems. With so many cases involving unethical behavior businesses have been forced to implement internal controls that will help prevent this type of behavior and culture.

Reports can be a great help when analyzing your business progress and performance.  Frequent review of your reports will give great insight into what is happening within your organization.  Some reports will tell you if you’re doing a good job collecting on your receivable accounts and if you are going to have a problem with cash flow.  Other reports can tell you if you are low on cash while other reports will assist in determining if you are making a profit.  Get ready with account payable match with balaance sheet dial QuickBooks Support Number for detail information.

Maintaining  good control over the Accounts Payables functions is imperative.  Accounts Payable functions are an area of accounting that has a lot of risk associated with it. In this function people have the opportunity to short cut the system and possibly start writing checks to themselves.  Implementing controls in this area will reduce the risk of employee theft, terrible cash flow, and payable errors.

Vendors Accounts Payable

Here are some good controls to implement when dealing with Vendors and Accounts Payable.

• First require all incoming invoices be matched with company purchase orders.  Company Purchase Orders can be produced using QuickBooks. From the Home Page select Vendors….select Create Purchase Orders. Complete the Purchase Order form filling in all the necessary information.  If you have a business that orders inventory on behalf of customers you will want to create a customer so that the customer will be billed for the correct purchase.  Apart of the Accounts Payable function is to properly track purchases made by the company.  If you don’t carefully follow through on each step, it could take more time in the long run trying to follow the “order trail”.
• Second after the incoming invoices are matched with the proper company purchase order another person (manager or owner) will need to approve the entering of the invoice into the QuickBooks file.
• Once the invoices are entered into the system determine what day of the week should be your “check run” day.  You could make it every Wednesday or Friday (consider one of your slower days).  You want to avoid having your accounts payable person cutting checks sporadically. Have the person responsible for check printing run an Accounts Payable report (Reports…Vendors & Accounts Payable…Aging Report) to determine which vendors will be paid.  This report should be checked against the check register we will be talking about in a moment. 
• When analyzing your check register report from QuickBooks (Reports…Bank…Check Register) you will be able to look for checks not printed on the same day as other checks.  Run your check register report at least bi-weekly.  You don’t want a long time to pass before you verify the accuracy of the information enabling you to discover theft quickly.  This should be another internal control measure. Get help on this matter call QuickBooks Payroll Customer Support Number
• If all looks good on your check register then you the repeat the process.  Don’t become lazy and complacent because theft and other issues can happen any time.

Implementing some of these internal control measures will help reduce internal theft as it relates to the Accounts Payable functions especially when using QuickBooks. Call Today