We work with several companies that have locations spread across a wide swath of the United States.B Prior to making their way to us, every one of those locations received at least one (if not many) invoices for some telecom service.
As an accountant, I know first-hand how time-consuming and risky this is.B Let me break it down for you.
- Each invoice must be processed.B To do that it is received and transferred to the appropriate person, reviewed, entered into the accounts payable system, a check (or other form of payment) is generated, and it is ultimately filed (either physically or electronically).
- This process consumes 5 to 10 minutes of staff time b if it is handled efficiently.
- Most of this work is completed by someone that is compensated in the range of $12 to $20 per hour ($25K to $40K annual salary) plus benefits of 10 to 20 percent.
- Using $18 per hour (the middle of this range) the cost to process each invoice is $2 to $3.
So, maybe youb re saying b thatb s not badb .B If you recall, I mentioned that there is also risk associated with this approach.
One of our customers recently moved a new person into the accounting department to process accounts payable.B Coincidentally, their contract for telecom services expired and the costs for those services increased dramatically (5 to 10 times the normal cost).B The new accounts payable person processed the invoice without noticing that the cost was way out of line.B Now, theyb re left hoping for a refund.
There were controls in place that should have prevented this from happening.B But, as any of us operating a business know, things occasionally b slip through the cracksb .B And, if accounts payable has to spend a lot of additional time processing the invoices to make sure this doesnb t happen, then your cost just went up dramatically!
We solve this problem with consolidation.B We have a number of ways to handle this depending on the telecommunication service that youb re being invoiced for. B Most of the companies we use will provide an initial analysis at no charge.B They do this to show you where your weaknesses are b and to demonstrate their value, of course.
If you have more than a few locations or invoices from telecom companies that you process every month, consolidation could make your life much easier by helping you with telecom expense management.B We can consolidate POTS lines, mobile devices, data services, voice services b just about anything.B Let us know if youb d like to take us up on the free initial analysis.
