Posts By Joe Flynn

New Resources and Best Practices Advice: Lavante In The News

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Word is spreading like wildfire. Articles featuring best practices and tips on credit recovery from Lavante have been hitting the streets over the past two months. If you are looking for some expert advice on how best to put dollars back to your bottom line, the following articles may give you the valuable insight you need.

Procedures and Fixes for Vendor File Management,  AP Journal Online, January 2012.
Sherry DePew, Lavante’s vice president of product management, outlines the value of vendor files and an ongoing process for vendor-file cleansing.

Best Practices for Ongoing AP to AR Reconciliation in the Supply and Demand Chain, Accounting Software 411, January 2012
In this piece, Lavante CEO Joe Flynn shares valuable best practices to help companies drive a successful statement audit with their supplier base.

Finding the Dollars in the Haystack, Institute for Supply Management, December 2011.
Here, Henry Ijams, an analyst at PayStream Advisors, offers real world advice on statement auditing, with best practice methodologies in selecting a technology solution to conduct a comprehensive recovery audit that maximizes results. He outlines effective methods to uncover missing credits while reinforcing positive communication and liaison with valued suppliers.

Creative Credits – How Vendors Can Use Your Credits to Their Benefit if You’re Not Looking, Financial Operations, December 2011.
This article, written by Lavante’s vice president of product management, Sherry DePew, gives readers a unique view into the risks associated with leaving vendor credits on the books.

In addition to these resources, you’ll find a wealth of best practices and real-world guidance by joining an upcoming Lavante event or on-demand webinar.

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Posted in AP Industry, IAPP, Lavante, Recovery Audit, Technology, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »

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Seven Tips to Avoid the Impact of Bad Supplier Data

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

Bad data can be at the root of many finance and accounts payable challenges. And there are many ways vendor data can be processed that cause duplicate vendor files to be set up.

Consider the various ways that a company names can be constructed.  The screen shot below how the Lavante Recovery™ solution has located potential duplicate vendors based on phone and fax numbers matching for variously-named suppliers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From inconsistent naming conventions, to the same vendors located at different addresses, the potential for errors are vast and the impact of this bad data can be dramatic.

Based on a recent research report by Jason Busch and Thomas Kase of Spend Matters, here are the top seven areas to focus on to avoid the costly impact of bad supplier data:

  1. Create an undisputed single point of reference – With processes to automate the supplier registration process, to collect supplier communications in a common repository and to assure data entry accuracy, organizations and dramatically eliminate costly errors.
  2. Adhere to compliance requirements – Technology solutions can build in flexibility to support new compliance requirements by dynamically engaging with vendors around business changes, reducing compliance turnaround.
  3. Assure security and privacy – In partnership with the Information Technology organization, Finance and A/P need to have strong adherence to security and privacy governance for data security, IP protection and information privacy.
  4. Eliminate payment errors – A focus on processes to eliminate payment errors will reduce expenses around reissuing checks, late payment penalties and reduce over-payments and duplicate payments which can occur whenever a vendor is set up twice in the system.
  5. Establish business continuity dependencies – Often owned by the Procurement team, business continuity impacts areas including material costs such as wrong parts, the cost of product or service disruption when stock runs out, operational overhead. It is also important to evaluate sales-side impact prior to making buys-side decisions, especially if a vendor is also a customer.
  6. Minimize overhead for supplier management – By implementing supplier self-service maintenance functions, organizations can minimize internal staff resources for data maintenance activities
  7. Automate using technology – Investments in technology will greatly improve your overall ROI as well as improve a company’s procurement professional utilization which can result in substantial savings.

The full white paper,  Developing and Maintaining Accurate Supplier Data – Overcoming Dirty Supplier Information in Finance and Procurement, includes much more about the importance of keeping vendor data files clean and up-to-date, along with a case study that details how one Fortune 500 Pharmaceutical company used Lavante Recovery to solve the problem and improve its recovery processes.  Click here to download the report.  Or, click here to read more about how Lavante Recovery helps cleanse vendor contact records.

 

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Posted in AP Industry, Lavante, Recovery Audit, Supplier Information Management, Vendor File Cleansing, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »

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Lavante is Pleased to Welcome Lennox Industries as a New Lavante Recovery User

Monday, November 21st, 2011

Lennox Industries Selects Lavante RecoveryEarlier this month we announced the addition of a new Lavante Recovery™ customer, Lennox Industries.  I’d like to share with you some of the compelling reasons why they chose our solution over other traditional, manual services.  Not only do these reflect what I see as the key strengths of our technology-driven recovery solution, but they underscore what we continue to hear other companies describe as critical needs in the recovery audit industry.

Lennox selected Lavante, in part, because of our ability to deliver: comprehensive statement audit process;  patented, SaaS technology allowing seamless access to all results through a web-based portal;  speed and ease of deployment which delivers fast, continuous results, and; vendor file management and data cleansing as part of the recovery process.

Lavante’s patented SaaS technology continues to drive a differentiated offering for companies looking to maximize recovery dollars.  Because of our automated processes, Lavante Recovery is able to reach out across the breadth of a company’s supplier base vs. a small sampling which manual process-based services are limited to.  Our web-based portal also provides our users with seamless access to real-time reports and a view of every aspect of the recovery process.

The speed and ease of deployment are other important criteria to Lavante customers.  Our solution does not  require on-site personnel nor extensive, complex data collection procedures, making it fast and easy to deploy.   And in today’s business environment, where companies are forced to take on more and more task with fewer resources, our customers recognize that Lavante Recovery deployment has minimal impact on both AP and IT staff.

Another important feature noted in this announcement is the inclusion of vendor file management and data cleansing as part of the entire recovery process.  Our outreach to the majority of suppliers combined with over 2  million suppliers in the Lavante Supplier Network means that we update and cleanse your vendor contacts, which also helps to identify potential duplicate vendors.

We are excited to be working with Lennox Industries, a leading provider of customized home heating, cooling and indoor air quality products.   Click here to read more about this recent announcement.

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Posted in AP Industry, Lavante, Recovery Audit, Supplier Information Management, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »

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Lavante Responds to Customer Data Security Concerns with SAS 70 Type II Certification

Monday, June 27th, 2011

Last week marked an exciting moment for Lavante when we announced our SAS 70 Type II certification, continuing our forward momentum in developing and applying technology advances that benefit our customers. Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70, commonly abbreviated as SAS 70, is an auditing standard issued by American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

Our SAS 70 certification began with identifying 27 key controls related to our software development and data access security processes. Those controls were then evaluated and tested by a third party audit firm over a period of six months to ensure sustained performance. We are proud to have passed these tests and achieve the certification.

Our commitment to going through this long and rather arduous process came directly from our customer. After listening to their concerns around data security and SaaS applications we felt it was a necessary step to take in order to assure them that we had the highest level of security for all data.

But the impact of this certification extends beyond our customers, out to the industry as a whole. There are two different ways for a company to demonstrate SAS 70 compliance – the first is to use a SAS 70-compliant data hosting center, the second is to certify internal controls and development processes.

While other service providers in our industry have relied on only the first type, using SAS 70-compliant data centers, we clearly heard from our customers that this just wasn’t good enough. They wanted further assurance that development controls were in place on all internal processes, validated through a third party, as SAS 70 does.

To fully answer these requirements, we not only met the data center SAS 70 requirement, but extended this to cover the critical internal part of the equation. I predict that other service providers in our industry will now go down this same road, and adopt similar certification of internal process controls. This will be have a positive impact on our industry, by providing customers with further peace of mind and assurances that their data is secure.

In the end, I firmly believe that the future of our industry will flow directly through technology, providing intuitive applications that empower and enable people and companies to do more with less. As Lavante has demonstrated, most recently with our statement audit patent approval, that we will continue to lead the way in innovation and deploying technology that provides the highest levels of security to our customers.

Please add your comments here about what you think are them most critical concerns around data security and SAS 70 certification.

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Posted in AP Industry, Lavante, Recovery Audit | No Comments »

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President Obama Signs Repeal of Expanded 1099 Reporting Requirements

Friday, April 15th, 2011

President Obama on Thursday signed into law a bill repealing the expanded 1099 reporting requirements from the 2010 health care law.  The Senate passed the repeal bill in an 87-12 vote on April 5 after the House passed the bill in March.

The law repeals the expanded 1099 reporting requirements that were included in the funding provision of the 2010 health care law, which required all for-profit corporations issue 1099 forms to vendors from whom they purchased over $600 of goods or services in a tax year and was scheduled to go into effect for all payments made after December 31, 2011.

The repeal comes after months of debate about the impact of the reporting requirement on small businesses and how to cover the cost for the 1099 repeal, which is estimated at nearly $22B over the next 10 years.

“Today, I was pleased to take another step to relieve unnecessary burdens on small businesses by signing H.R. 4 into law,” reads the president’s signing statement. “Small business owners are the engine of our economy and because Democrats and Republicans worked together, we can ensure they spend their time and resources creating jobs and growing their business, not filling out more paperwork. I look forward to continuing to work with Congress to improve the tax credit policy in this legislation and I am eager to work with anyone with ideas about how we can make health care better or more affordable.”

So what does this mean for companies and their 1099 reporting?  Was expanded 1099 reporting a passing fad?  Actually, discussions around expansion of 1099 reporting requirements date back to the Bush administration and are aimed at better tracking business expenditures, earnings, and tax liability.  In order to ensure your company is ready to meet current 1099 reporting requirements, as well as future changes, the safest bet is to make sure you have the policies, processes, and systems to ensure up-to-date supplier tax information.

Sign up for the Lavante blog today to stay on top of AP and Finance topics.

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Posted in 1099 Reporting, Tax ID Numbers | No Comments »

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Lavante Awarded The Industry’s First Statement Audit Patent

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Last week, we announced that Lavante was awarded a new patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Patent Number 7,908,188 was awarded on March 15 and covers Lavante’s statement audit processes, technology and software application. This is a huge step for Lavante and a huge step in fundamentally changing the recovery auditing industry.

I’ve been working in the recovery auditing industry for over 16 years and I recognized an opportunity for large corporations to recover credits that are sitting out at their suppliers. I also realized that the manual processes used in traditional recovery audits were not going to scale to support an ongoing, full-scale review of supplier AR records. I founded Lavante in 2001 to build the processes, technology and application to automate the end-to-end statement auditing process.

Today, we’re the only automated solution for statement auditing in the market and this patent is an amazing validation of our original vision, our execution, and our technology leadership. I am so proud of the company and team that we’ve built. We’re experiencing record growth in our customer base and revenue, while partnering with our customers across industries help them find ongoing dollars out at their suppliers. At the same time, we help our customers improve their processes, data and relationships with their suppliers.

Our future vision gets even more exciting. We’ve taken our experience with supplier communication and management and we’ve expanded out product footprint to include Supplier Information Management (SIM). With a single platform for both recovery auditing and supplier information management, we’re offering the market a unique, self-funding combination for supplier AR reconciliation and quality supplier data. No one else in the industry provides this combination!

We recently closed a round of funding led by SAP Ventures. Here is how our new board member, Andreas Weiskam, Managing Director, SAP Ventures, describes our new patent:

“Lavante is filling a critical technology gap that has existed between companies and their suppliers. The ability to automate supplier communication and AR reconciliation is a game-changer for large corporations. The award of this patent validates Lavante’s visionary approach to technology and processes to the audit recovery market.”

I welcome your thoughts about this exciting development and how you see it will move the statement audit and recovery industry forward.

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Posted in Lavante, Recovery Audit, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »

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US Senate Passes the House’s 1099 Repeal Bill, Goes Next to the White House

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Today, the U.S. Senate passed the House’s 1099 repeal bill, H.R. 4, in an 87-12 vote.  The bill will go directly to the White House where President Barack Obama will have the opportunity to sign or veto the bill.

The 1099 reporting requirements is part of funding provision of the 2010 health care law. It required all for-profit corporations to issue 1099 forms to vendors from which they purchased over $600 of goods or services in a tax year, and is scheduled to go into effect for all payments made after December 31, 2011.

The Senate vote comes after months of debate about the impact of the reporting requirement on small businesses and how to cover the cost for the 1099 repeal, which is estimated at nearly $22B over the next 10 years.

Sign up for the Lavante blog today to stay on top of the 1099 repeal or check out our 1099 reporting center.

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Posted in 1099 Reporting, Tax ID Numbers | 1 Comment »

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House Approves Repeal of 1099 Reporting Requirements

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Today, the House passed the H.R. 4 bill in a 314-112 vote, repealing the 1099 reporting requirements from the funding provision of the 2010 health care law. The bill eliminates the requirement that all for-profit corporations issue 1099 forms to vendors from whom they purchased over $600 of goods or services in a tax year, scheduled to go into effect for all payments made after December 31, 2011.

The cost for the 1099 repeal is currently estimated at nearly $22B over the next 10 years. The funding remains the biggest debate around the 1099 repeal across the House, the Senate and the White House.

There was significant controversy in the House around the funding of the H.R. 4 bill, with Democrats calling it a tax hike on middle-class Americans. The bill increases the amount of health insurance subsidies that could be recaptured in cases where a family’s income exceeds certain thresholds. Read more.

The Senate passed their own 1099 repeal back in February as an amendment attached to the FAA funding bill. The funding for the Senate repeal gives the Office of Management and Budget the ability to take away nearly $44 billion of discretionary budget authority—except from the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs and Social Security.

The House bill will end up in the Senate next. The issue that still remains is – how to make up the funding for the health care law.

Sign up for the Lavante blog today to stay on top of the 1099 reporting changes or check out our 1099 reporting center.

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Posted in 1099 Reporting, Tax ID Numbers | 1 Comment »

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Ongoing Supplier AR Review, or Statement Audit, as a Best Practice

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

Transactional errors result in millions of dollars worth of accounting anomalies for F1000 companies each year. With millions of payments to thousands of vendors, business changes, new systems, and complex purchasing environments, 100 percent payment accuracy is nearly impossible – even for AP organizations with the strongest controls. More and more, AP and Shared Services departments are seeing that to identify the highest percentage of anomalies and recover the most dollars, it is necessary to investigate both their internal AP data and processes, as well as their suppliers’ AR data and processes. Find out more in a free webinar hosted by Lavante and PayStream Advisors -  Register now.

Historically, a comprehensive, ongoing review of a company’s suppliers’ AR records, known as a statement audit, was nearly impossible. The biggest challenge with successfully executing a large-scale supplier AR review is managing communication and outreach with mass volumes of suppliers. A “traditional” recovery audit would review the AR records for the company’s top suppliers to identify open credits on supplier records. This process was performed manually and focused only on the largest suppliers resulting in claims that were around 5% of recoveries found by the traditional audit.

In the past ten years, technology and automation have enabled a new way to approach statement auditing. A comprehensive statement audit targets the breadth of a company’s supplier population to request and analyze AR data which delivers significantly higher statement claims (5-10x) than the traditional approaches. This requires an automated solution to manage the supplier data, orchestrate the outreach, and collect and manage incoming information from suppliers. When executed properly, a supplier AR audit taps into an entirely new source of dollars due back to a company.

Additionally, an automated statement audit can be performed on an ongoing basis for a “rolling” timeframe. This provides a “safety net” for a company’s AP department by performing a supplier AR reconciliation on a regular basis, uncovering a continuous stream of credits. An ongoing, comprehensive statement audit is now considered a best practice.

To learn more about Lavante Recovery register for our blog, visit our Recovery Resource Center.

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Posted in Recovery Audit, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »

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1099 Provisions Revised, Not Repealed in Obama’s 2012 Budget

Friday, February 18th, 2011

President Obama released his proposed fiscal year 2012 budget this week. The budget contains a portion of the 1099 provisions from the 2010 Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (aka, the health care law).

As a refresher, the funding provision of the health care law requires all for-profit corporations to issue 1099 forms to vendors from whom they purchased over $600 of goods or services in a tax year. These changes are scheduled to go into effect for all payments made after December 31, 2011. The biggest changes from current 1099 reporting requirements are:

  1. 1099 reporting for payments to corporations (except tax-exempt corporations), most payments to corporations are currently exempt
  2. 1099 reporting for purchase of property (goods, merchandise, supplies, raw materials, equipment, etc.), currently only payments for services require a 1099

Now, back to the budget. The 2012 budget includes the requirement for 1099 reporting for payments to corporations beginning in 2012, but would repeal the requirement relating to payments for property. The proposal is expected to raise about $10 billion over 10 years (vs the nearly $20 billion expected from the 1099 provisions in the health care law).

Meanwhile, the House is moving forward with its bill to repeal the 1099 requirements. The bill was passed by the Ways and Means Committee on February 17 and is expected to go to the House floor this spring. This follows the 1099 repeal amendment attached to the FAA funding bill which passed in the senate earlier this month. If the 1099 repeal bill passes in the House, it will end up in a conference committee to reconcile the differences with the Senate version. The issue that still remains is – how to make up the funding for the health care law.

Sign up for the Lavante blog today to stay on top of the 1099 reporting changes or check out our 1099 reporting center.

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Posted in 1099 Reporting, Tax ID Numbers | No Comments »

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