My First Experience With AP

Nate Hug
Nate Hug Blackbaud Employee
Eighth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® Blog
My first experience with AP was in college. You’d think I was referring to an accounting class, but it actually occurred in my apartment. I lived with five other people and was the lucky one in charge of paying the electricity. Essentially, this is what I went through each month:

 
  1. First, I had to retrieve the bill from the mailbox. We only had one key and nobody ever knew where it was located - looking for it in the apartment was like finding that one penny making your bank rec off.
  2. After obtaining the bill, I let everyone know how much they owed. Usually, I wrote down the amount on a random napkin or envelop and stuck it by the kitchen sink. Most of the time, the napkin got wet, was torn to pieces by my roommate’s cat (shout-out to you, Jinx Cat) or tossed out.
  3. My roommates typically paid me in cash or check. This meant going to the bank, filling out a deposit slip and placing their money in my account.
  4. By this time, the bill was normally due and I had to frantically go pay or else risk a late payment.
  5. Tell my roommate’s we’re doing better next month and not going through this again.
And that’s how we paid our electricity for two years.

Needless to say, this wasn’t the most effective method, but it did allow me to learn the importance of having an efficient accounts payable process. After working with a lot of FE clients, I’ve found we’re of a similar opinion: AP needs to be synonymous with organization and efficiency. With this in mind, the Customer Success team created a webinar called AP Tips for Efficiency and Customizing your Data Entry. The idea behind the session is to showcase a variety of ways to create more efficiency within the subledger and also customize aspects of your data entry (which hopefully will lead to additional efficiency). This includes topics such as vendor defaults, business rules, hiding unused fields and more. If this piques your interest, sign up HERE – I’d love to have you join us.


And who knows, maybe I’ll even toss in a slide about integrating the napkin by the sink method at your organization…

 

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