Month: March 2011

An accounts payable audit might throw up surprising results

Accounts departments, just like any other department in a business, are subject to human error. Even if your computer networks are infallible, or at least remove the most obvious problems, there are still the weak links in the chain: the people who enter the numbers and send the invoices in the first place. And unfortunately, more so than other departments, accounts are more likely to be exploited for financial gain. This is where an accounts payable audit can come in extremely handy, and might turn up some surprising results. Errors such as duplicate payments, and deliberate fraud in accounting, can cost your business large amounts of cash that you may not have. Of course, you may be able to discover the discrepancies and solve them yourself, but this takes time and, therefore, money; there is also the reality that if you did not see them the first time, you’re unlikely to come up with much new the second or third time through. The law of diminishing returns states that the more time you spend on the problem, the less efficient you will be. That’s where recovery audit software can be worth its weight in gold.

No one wants to think that their business is inefficient – or, worse, that con-artists are exploiting it. However, the reality is that if you own a business, there are almost certainly problems in the accounts system. In an ideal world, for many reasons, these would not exist. Some ballpark figures suggest that error rates equal roughly 1 percent of turnover on average; others maybe a little more or less. That money could be better spent on paying staff and suppliers, or paying down debt. Errors may be unavoidable, but allowing them to go unchecked is not.

If you’re in any doubt about the upside of recovery audit software, then check with the suppliers. If they are worth your money, then they should be able to guarantee that the cost of the package will pay for itself – perhaps even straight away. Plus, if having those procedures in place means that you will avoid duplicate payments and other overpayment errors in the future, you will only continue to profit on your investment. An accounts payable audit is a straightforward way of recouping past losses and preventing future ones. At a time of uncertainty, no-risk ways of doing that can only be a good thing.

Please visit http://www.fiscaltechnologies.com/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.fiscaltechnologies.com/

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A cash advance may make economic sense

If you’re looking for a cash advance to tide you over immediate cash difficulties, there won’t be many questions you want to ask. You’ll want to establish that your short term loan is offered on the best rates available, since these companies can typically be pretty costly. 30 percent for the month is normal – an amount which can stack up over the year to massive rates, which is why they only provide the loan for a limited period (typically a month) in the first place. Secondly, you’ll need to be sure that they are as ethical as possible in their business: you don’t want to be caught up with the online equivalent of a doorstep loan shark. Fortunately, the nature of the business and the law around it should mean that everything is fairly clear on the website. If it’s not, find another company. Lastly, instant loan approval should be just that: instant. If you have to wait around to get your money, the lender has missed the point.

These companies are typically quite expensive (30 percent per month is a rate that no credit card could ever dare to ask). But they fill a different niche in the market. These are definitely not long-term loans. They are instant sums of money to fill a short term need. Expressed as a percentage – particularly annualised – these lenders are not economical. However, as a straight fee for the use of the money in that one month, it might be a very different story. The only question you need to ask is, are the consequences of not taking out the money more expensive than the fees? It’s straightforward economics.

Of course, if you can find the money more cheaply elsewhere, you’re much better off doing that. But if you don’t have access to an overdraft, friends to lend you the cash, or even a credit card, then you may have come to the end of the road. The next stop is the loan shark, and that’s a decision no one should have to contemplate. cash advance companies on the web should be able to offer you a short-term loan with none of the complications to your kneecaps associated with doorstep lenders. Instant loan approval is subject to a swift (literally almost instant – think 30 second) online credit check, and they are (or ought to be – check) bound by a professional code of ethics that ensures they won’t provide money to anyone who is unable to be able to pay them back. It makes sense – defaulting on the debt doesn’t do the company any favours either.

Please visit http://www.cashgenieloans.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.cashgenieloans.co.uk/

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Bid support -€“ a smart investment

We all know it; times are lean. When it comes to the bottom line, every bid for new business counts. It’s tempting to slash advertising budgets, sack the consultants and just try to keep overheads down. However, if your company is always coming second in bids for new business and tendering unsuccessfully for those crucial bread-and-butter contracts, maybe, rather than try and find a new sales manager, it could be more economical to bring in some temporary expertise. If sales are where it’s falling down, there are now companies specialised in the whole bid support process from business proposal writing to sales presentation training and they could just turn things around for you.

As in all service areas, the key word is ‘bespoke’. Maybe your sales guys are doing a wonderful job out there but are working with poor materials. Tired PowerPoint presentations and brochures which make even the sales team yawn are not going to inspire potential new clients. Behind the presentations comes the hard graft of business proposal writing – maybe this is where you need the help. Or the inverse may be true – the team at head office put their everything into the details of the bid, which the sales team then fail to deliver effectively because of sub-standard sales presentation training.

Bringing in specialists in tender and bid support is no longer something that just big companies do. In fact, it’s precisely the smaller players in the market who can ill afford to employ specialists in all these complex areas full-time who can most benefit from an outside team coming in short-term with fresh ideas and market-leading competencies to pass on. It’s also smaller businesses who most rely for their survival on winning new contracts. Suddenly, hiring a specialist company starts to make sense.

There are added bonuses to hiring a company to steer you through the tendering process. The bid support you pay for this time may well give you the confidence and expertise to handle it alone the next time you have a big pitch. Knowing you have expert help with your business proposal writing and that your team are receiving excellent sales presentation training can additionally give you a confidence at tender time which will be communicated in your bid. And confidence, when it comes to that big pitch, could be something well worth paying for.

Please visit http://www.salesengine.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Computer support London is the best option for businesses in the capital

Aside from perhaps a minority of the smallest and most informal of businesses, every company nowadays relies on computers to carry out their every day work. In fact, IT has become such an integral part of business operations that a computer issue – be it a hardware failure, software crash or internet outage – can seriously impact profitability and lead to hours or days of wasted time – time that most companies can ill afford to give up. For computer support London offers plenty of services that are on hand 24 hours a day and can address your problem remotely or, where necessary, in person. IT support London is massively important, and can give you the peace of mind that you are not at the mercy of the vagaries of your IT systems.

IT failures are regularly high on the list of reasons or excuses that companies give for a bad service or even complete lack of engagement, in some cases. There are regular reports of websites going down – either unintentionally, through unforeseen circumstances, or through malicious attack. Your website is the first impression that customers have of your organisation; a broken website can mean that potential clients just exercise their initiative and find another company that is unaffected, therefore leading to permanent loss of business for you. Although some of these problems are very serious and unavoidable, a large number can be easily fixed or, better still, avoided in the first place if someone with the right training is involved in running them. Some larger companies may have on-site assistance, since the size of their operation means that it is worthwhile using IT support on a full-time basis; others will contract out, finding this more economic. Either way, you need help at hand as fast as possible when something goes wrong – ideally minutes rather than hours or, in the worst case scenario, days.

So, IT support London is vital for companies with a significant web presence or which rely on their computer systems to carry out their day-to-day operations. Without such computer support London companies can find themselves hamstrung by circumstances beyond their control, seriously affecting their profitability and image to their customers. In the worst cases, large amounts of business and money can be lost, such as when the London Stock Exchange had to close due to computer problems. Even on a smaller scale, that kind of catastrophic failure is one best avoided.

Please visit http://www.fwcs.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.fwcs.co.uk/

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Jobs in occupational therapy might be a realistic option

Contrary to what it might appear, allied health jobs comprise the majority of vacancies within the health sector. These are the occupations that are not immediately noticeable on your trips to the doctor or hospital, but such positions lie behind and support the more visible professionals (such as doctors and nurses) that make up the health service. Thus, if you are looking for work in the NHS or health sector more generally, there is a vast range of careers that you might be ignoring – jobs in occupational therapy and jobs in radiography, for example. These can follow a very different training path to ‘traditional’ medicine or nursing, and so can be an option for those who wish to retrain or move sideways into other areas of work.

This category of jobs accounts for something like 60 percent of all the jobs in the health services – a surprising number on the surface of it, but more understandable when you realise that these are simply the behind-the-scenes employees that support all the work that the most visible staff carry out. These are the technicians who process blood tests, work the x-ray machines, offer all kinds of counselling and physical therapies – all the work, in short, that requires specialist training of one kind or another, and that the doctors and nurses who do most of the face-to-face work and time on the wards may not be able to do. Because allied health is a related but different area to regular medicine, it often has a different entry path. There are jobs agencies that deal specifically with allied health jobs, and can help you find all the vacancies in your local area or nation-wide that might be suitable for your circumstances, training and experience. These posts would not usually be advertised in a job centre or possibly other normal jobs agencies, because they are specialist.

If you are looking for jobs in radiography, jobs in occupational therapy, various kinds of physical and speech therapy, diet or any other allied health jobs, then you would do well to visit an agency which will recognise and deal with your needs, and that is consequently more likely to offer you the kinds of vacancies you want. These work both ways – for people looking for work, and for health services looking for employees. They are used to providing staff at short notice, and to matching job-seekers with suitable vacancies.

Please visit http://www.abouthealthprofessionals.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.abouthealthprofessionals.co.uk/

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Document processing makes life a lot easier

Document management systems are an answer to a problem that has only really existed since the rise of the desktop computer and its use in offices and businesses around the world. Thirty years ago, the majority of commerce was carried out the old fashioned way: with pens and paper, typewriters and filing cabinets. Documents were physical objects that could be held in the hand, read and altered manually, and then left in a filing cabinet. Then along came the PC, and some people preferred to use that, with its versatile word-processing programs and spreadsheets. The problem was that even the most computer literate person would from time to time doodle a note on a piece of paper, and many forms require filling out with a pen. It’s going to be a long time before we see the back of physical documents in offices. Enter document processing, the means by which physical pieces of paper – letters, forms, invoices and other documents essential to the running of a business – are made into e-versions, so that they can be stored in the same file systems as the docs that were created on the computer in the first place. Invoice processing does the same for the accounts department, meaning that none of your clients are treated differently – either because you are primarily set up to prioritise physical invoices, or virtual ones.

The fact is that all offices have this problem. It’s a rare business that is genuinely paperless, although some claim this. Even if they are, their clients may not be – in which case, how do you deal with one of the many pieces of paper they send you? Answer: process it and turn it into a computer file. This may be a straightforward scan to pdf, but more sophisticated systems actually use advanced character recognition to turn handwriting into a word-processed file – invaluable for someone who still prefers jotting notes with a biro, but needs them to be legible to everyone (especially if that ‘everyone’ includes co-workers on the other side of the world).

So document management systems are a must for significant companies who have to find a way of somehow fusing their modern IT systems and online ethos with the realities of pen and paper, and the physical documents customers and suppliers may prefer. document processing means that everything can be stored the same way, and nothing is left behind just because it happens to be printed, rather than stored electronically. Invoice processing applies this to the bills and payments your company has to make – again, invaluable for a modern firm with a reputation to keep.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.bottomline.co.uk/

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Social services jobs are challenging but fulfilling

Social work jobs comprise a significant range of work across the care sector. Although there are some characteristics and some training that you will need as standard, whatever the social services jobs you are applying for, depending on what you go for you could end up in very different areas – and with very different roles. Social worker jobs are pretty common, even in a time of recession and economic hardship, since there are always areas of need that are not dependent on – indeed, are only encouraged by – the tough state of the economy. Added to this the demographic changes that are occurring on a grand scale, and it’s highly likely that the broad range of jobs available in this area will only continue to expand in the medium term, whatever the short-term expediencies of government spending. Thus social work is a good area to try at if you are looking for a permanent change of career.

There has been some criticism of social services in recent times, for a number of reasons. The worst of these are the failings that have led to the high-profile deaths of children – failings that could have and should have been avoided. In recent weeks, however, there has finally been recognition that the burden of paperwork on social workers has got to the point where it is seriously impacting their ability to do their jobs properly. It must be hoped that wider efficiencies in the health and care systems will be extended to social work too, allowing social workers to carry out the roles that they have been trained to do, and, in most cases, are highly competent and driven to fulfil. The training process has also come under the spotlight recently, and so it is worth keeping an eye on recent developments. However, there is no reason to believe that this will not continue to be a growth area, since the care needs of the UK can only increase. One of the major problems facing the UK is an aging population as the Baby Boom generation retires, and the strain this will place on the care system.

Thus social worker jobs are a promising sector for those interested in the caring professions. social services jobs are usually advertised widely by regular job agencies, and you will be able to find more specific information from one of the specialist social work jobs agencies around – the internet is usually a good place to start, since these companies are often national instead of regional or local, allowing them to round up a large number of vacancies and advertise them centrally.

Please visit http://www.socialworkandcarejobs.com/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.socialworkandcarejobs.com/

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Graduate scheme places still exist for the resourceful

It’s a cliché to say that the internet has changed the whole of our lives but when it comes to findingyour dream job as a graduate, it certainlyholds true. Whereas the end of University days used to mean looking through dusty folders at the Careers Centre for information on graduate scheme and internship jobs, all that has changed. Not only do companies have their own web-sites, making it more straightforward to get information on graduate jobs but much of the business of the careers service is also now done on-line. Whether it’s sending out weekly job listings or making a large part of their services available from the comfort of a student laptop, universities know that getting their graduates into great jobs involves less paper and more PCs.

However, one thing has not changed in this cyber-dominated world. Landing yourself the right job – and that’s one that you find satisfying and interesting as well as one that pays of that mountain of student debt at a pleasing rate – still involves insider knowledge not customarily available on company web-sites.  It also takes the honing of specific people skills such as negotiation. This is where a whole new breed of independent careers sites comes in, employing everything the internet can offer to help students land the graduate jobs or the places on graduate scheme which they so want.

Take CareerPlayer.com, for instance. Some of what they do resembles a good student careers office – they link up job seekers with information about internship jobs or provide information on the big milk round employers, for instance. However, they can also offer things that until now were only available to the very well connected, showing that the web is indeed a socially equalising medium. Interested in a career in journalism? There’s a video interview with a key player in the business. See yourself as a civil servant? The video clips from people who have trodden that path before you may inspire or put you off. There is an enormous library of these clips, all available at the click of a mouse, covering every big industry.

On top of that, there are clips on every aspect of the application process, from how to cope with assessment centres or psychometric testing to finalising the deal at the last interview. Each stage of the process is covered with written information available where it’s more appropriate.

With the current market for graduate jobs a tough one, (although, according to the latest figures, not as gloomy as some had predicted), one can only expect that those determined to land the coveted places on graduate scheme or those sought-after first-step-on-the-ladder internship jobs will increasingly be turning to these alternative providers of careers advice. Frankly, they’d be foolish not to.

Please visit http://www.careerplayer.com/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.careerplayer.com/

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