The New CFO Financial Leadership Manual, Second Edition

Chapter 20. Operational Best Practices^[*]

All accounting processes can be improved in some manner in order to increase the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the accounting department. Such improvements are known as best practices. They can range from such simple expedients as the creation of a signature stamp to increase the speed of check signing to the installation of advanced document management systems that allow one to avoid most records management issues. The full range of best practices would encompass an entire book (and does: for a full treatment of this topic, refer to Bragg, Accounting Best Practices, Wiley: 2005). This chapter contains a number of the more common best practices, listed in alphabetical order by functional area, as well as a graphical representation of the approximate cost and implementation time needed to install each one. Any best practice that requires a high cost has a notation beneath it of three stacks of money, while those best practices requiring fewer funds have a correspondingly smaller number of stacks. Similarly, a best practice requiring a lengthy installation time has a notation beneath it containing three alarm clocks, while those with shorter installation times have a smaller number of clocks.

Best Practices

• Accounts payable: accept electronic data interchange invoices. Many larger companies with advanced operational capabilities prefer to issue invoices to their customers by electronic data interchange (EDI), rather than with a paper ...