With the turmoil in the world and the ongoing activities of bad actors, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has been busy in 2023. Along with nearly constant updates to sanction lists, OFAC has penalized nine companies and one individual for violations to date in 2023. It has issued ten penalties, … Recent OFAC Actions, Penalties and New Video Series
If there’s one thing that businesses learned during the pandemic, it’s that supply chain matters. Mismanaging vendors can result in operational inefficiencies, higher costs and strained supplier relationships. One lousy customer interaction can have other happy vendors racing for the door. What’s more, 48 percent of businesses find it difficult to manage supplier costs, according … Overcoming Vendor Management Challenges with a Supplier Portal
Vendor master files are dynamic. Organizations add new vendors and should inactivate old vendors. Active vendors change addresses and bank accounts, merge or acquire other vendors. Consequently, vendor master files require upkeep. Here are steps to cleaning the vendor master file. Part one of this two-part series on VMF cleansing addressed the first two of … 9 Steps to Cleaning the Vendor Master File – Part II
Vendor masters are not static files. New vendors are added regularly. Old vendors need to be inactivated. And vendors send change requests for contacts, address and bank account information. The vendor master file (VMF) is a lot to keep up. And many organizations do not keep it up regularly. Vendor files need cleansing. There are … 9 Steps to Cleaning the Vendor Master File – Part I
Criminals are compromising emails to steal money from businesses, governments and institutions. Any organization can be a target: businesses of any size as well as health care organizations, education, and local and state governments. Recent headline cases include Ubiquiti Networks, Toyota Boshoku Corporation and Scoular Company. And the U.S. territory Puerto Rico offers a classic … A Classic Case of Vendor Email Compromise
Appearances and Vendor Payments One of the most iconic scenes in a Hollywood heist movie comes near the end of Ocean’s Eleven. The “team” minus Danny Ocean lean against the balustrade in front of the Bellagio on the Las Vegas strip, quietly gazing at the fountains as Debussy’s beautiful Claire de Lune plays. Then one … Falling for the Illusion of Cybercriminals Will Cost You
ACH has steadily grown, while check payments are declining. Seventy-eight percent of organizations use ACH for some vendor payments. And while 82 percent of organizations still make some payments by check, according to a survey by the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP), the volume of checks by businesses has been steadily declining. According to the Federal … ACH Rising: What It Means for Vendor Information Management
Several important factors are involved in vendor onboarding, but these can make an inefficient process. Onboarding begins, naturally, with the collection of the requisite information. How an organization collects vendor data touches on accuracy versus error, completeness, privacy and security. An organization must validate vendor data to meet compliance requirements and ensure accuracy of the … How to Gain Efficiency in Vendor Onboarding
It’s late September and time to plan for 1099 reporting for 2021. That means checking your vendor master for missing taxpayer-identification numbers and classifications and formulating a plan to collect and verify them by the end of the year. It also means preparing for this year’s form changes. Last year saw changes to the 1099-MISC … Time to Check Your TINs, Plus: 1099-MISC and NEC Form Changes
The arm of the law is not only long but patient and painstaking. This month, the U.S. Department of Justice charged a former account manager for Swedish telecom giant Ericsson with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The one-time Ericsson employee facilitated the payment of $2 million to two high-ranking officials in … Payables and FCPA Compliance
Hackers continue a relentless barrage Last December, the U.S. government announced a major cyber breach by Russian hackers. Before we had understood fully the impact of that attack on 18,000 organizations and government agencies, we learned “holes” in Microsoft’s email software led to another compromise of 30,000 U.S. organizations. That attack was by Hafnium, a … Cyber Risk Statistics and the Need to Secure Sensitive Information
Vendor Fraud Risk Scientists have detected mutations of the Coronavirus in the U.K., South Africa, Nigeria and Brazil. These mutations can change how rapidly the disease spreads. So far, it does not appear to increase its virulence. For the finance personnel, there’s a parallel in the arena of financial fraud. In the realm of business … Mutations: BEC becomes VEC
