Most companies today don't get the silliness of their accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) departments. The sole purpose of these insanely expensive and time consuming operations is making payments to vendors and collecting payments from customers respectively. These non value added exercises should use the least of amount resources yet most businesses are extreme violators of this basic rule. 

The Golden Rule of Non-Value Added Business Activities:
Every non-value added business activity should use the least amount of resources or be eliminated. 

Size Doesn't Matter
Using resources efficiently is a choice and has nothing to do with size. Microbusiness owners are blind to the invisible nature of wasted resources resulting from a small number of transactions. In contrast, large companies have lots of resources so they become very good at wasting money. They typically enable bad business processes by hiring another person reinforcing bad resource wasting habits instead of using a better process. The Power of Business Processes™ remains elusive to companies of all sizes especially when it comes to AP and AR. 

Invisible Expenses™ Strike Again
Resources get wasted because Invisible Expenses™ don't show up on the income statement so businesses can't see them. Say a business owner discovers a $149 per month charge for a service they never used for the past 18 months. They will immediately shut down this visible expense and stop the bleeding that siphoned off $2,682. The obvious nature of visible expenses makes them easier to deal with. Meanwhile Invisible Expenses™ exhibit the following 3 traits:

1) Linger for a long time
2) More expensive 
3) Hard to detect 

Getting Paid
When entrepreneurs start a business they think about their company name, creating a website and how much to sell their products and services for. The last thing they think about is The Power of Business Processes™ and how they will get paid is an after thought at best. Those exciting first sales are landed, the work gets done, invoices are sent to the customer and the waiting game begins. You've had to pay some suppliers but you're still waiting to get paid as the weeks quickly pass by. Then you hear the most famous phrase of all, "the check is in the mail." Is it really in the mail or is your customer about to put in the mail as they juggle their own cash flow? 

Cash is King
There's nothing like having thousands of dollars on the street, a big fat AR balance on your books, when you have monster bills to pay and no cash to pay them with. If you've gone through this, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. So yes cash is king and how you get paid should be your number one business process. Entrepreneurs have the power to say how it goes and the sooner you weave your company's new payment policies into all communications with employees and customers the sooner your AR balance gets turned into cash. 

Paper Payments
The true cost of getting paid and paying vendors in paper checks has been estimated at more than $20 per invoice or bill when all the fumbling and labor cost is factored in. Several white papers on this topic have come to the same conclusion. This is nightmarishly expensive any way you slice it much like a tax on making payments and getting paid. If your business has 100 vendor bills then the AP cost would be $2,000 just to get bills paid. With the right technology and processes this profit killing expense can be slashed to less than 25%. 

Free & Instantaneous
We live in a world where sending and receiving money should be as easy as sending and receiving emails which are free and instantaneous. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies already make sending money as easy as an email but that's a blog for another day. Until you get up to speed on bitcoin you and your business should start using some great technology. The following two platforms can be bolted on to most of the popular accounting platforms like QuickBooks and Xero:

a) Bill.com
b) Bill-sync.com

These accounting packages already provide tools for getting paid, however bill.com and bill-sync.com provide 5 stealthy features to get paid lightning fast:

1) Built-in internal controls
2) Multiple user levels 
3) Admin controls 
4) Fraud deterrence 
5) Special bill email and fax number for receiving bills

Faster Payments

If you implement these tips and technologies, then you will speed up payments to your company and payments you make to vendors. Cash flow is the lifeblood of a business so make it your number one priority. You can always outsource and have virtual bookkeeping done for you by getting The Ultimate Paperless Back Office™ by invizibiz.biz.