Feel free to share your insights on 2021 in the comments section below.

Wonder what next year will be like for professionals in accounting and accounts payable? What about the future of live conferences? Fingers crossed, we’ll have a very different year next year and it will be better in ways you might not have considered. Listen to this savvy group to find out how and why.

The co-hosts (Jamie Radford, CEO of AP Association, and Mary Schaeffer, Founder AP Now) are joined by a panel of experts (Stewart Griffiths, Tom Flynn, Heather Peters, and Teri Cook). They discussed the surprising things they learned about themselves and their accounts payable function in 2020, what they found the most difficult, and their outlook for 2021.

If you are feeling blue their uniformly optimistic outlook for 2021 will brighten you up – especially the prediction at the end about how we look back on 2020. Wondering about the future of conferences? It was interesting to hear the different perspectives: from the conference organizer to the attendees and finally from the view of a frequent exhibitor.

The live audience was quite generous in sharing their thoughts and experiences as well.  

Co-Host: Mary Schaeffer (https://www.ap-now.com/)

Co-Host: Jamie Radford (https://www.ap-association.com/)

Credit: Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

https://youtu.be/XxGtDaR6fiw

Get the latest accounts payable business intelligence delivered straight to your inbox twice a week.

After explaining the process, she explains why certain somewhat simpler approaches won’t work and in closing she goes through the steps a second time.

Host: Mary Schaeffer (https://www.ap-now.com/)

Credit: Music: https://www.purple-planet.com 

Get the latest accounts payable business intelligence delivered straight to your inbox twice a week.

Howard is an expert on crafting a professional profile that many envy. She alluded to it in the prior podcast and so she was invited to share her expertise on this very important issue with the podcast audience.

Howard talked about how she shares information with her ever-growing community on LinkedIn. She recommends trying to network not only with people who are like you but also people who are very different from you but might have careers you’d like to emulate.   

Host: Mary Schaeffer (https://www.ap-now.com/)

Guest: Rebecca Howard

Credit: Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Sign up for AP Now’s free twice-a-week ezine. 

Rebecca Howard’s professional life changed drastically when COVID hit. She did consulting work for companies in many countries and spent a good deal of her time on flights and working in customers’ offices. When she was back in the UK, she spent a good chunk of her time working in the company’s offices. But she did work remotely some of the time so she was well positioned on that front when remote working became a necessity.  

Sign up for AP Now’s free twice-a-week ezine. 

In this episode of the AP Now podcast, Mary Schaeffer discusses speaking at conferences, the opportunities it affords, and what turns audiences off. 

She bases her insights not only on personal experience but also on data from three years of conference data of over 300 sessions. She notes what types of sessions audiences attended but also what sessions they dislike.

She gives listeners five general types of talks they can give that will resonate with audiences. 

She shares special advice for service providers who have the unenviable task of creating a talk that will cause attendees to come to visit them in their booths in the exhibit hall – be it at a live session or online at a virtual event.

She closes by admonishing the audience not to waste the opportunity afforded them by speaking at a conference – be it to be recognized as a thought leader in the industry or getting listeners to come over to an exhibitor’s booth, either at live or virtual events.

Sign up for AP Now’s free twice-a-week ezine.

The panel (going in very rough geographical order) was comprised of Sandra Firman from Australia, Maciej Boryslawski from Germany, Stewart Griffith from the UK, Louise Guigue from Canada, and Regina Italiano from the US. This session focused on how everyone was doing and lessons learned throughout the crisis.

It began with a brief discussion about how the accounts payable function has changed over the past decade. We then moved on to the inevitable lessons learned. Everyone got a good laugh when Regina commented on patience. The group then discussed what the future of accounts payable would look like and closed with comments on what best practices we can share as a global community.

Host: Mary Schaeffer (https://www.ap-now.com/)

Guest: Jamie Radford (https://www.ap-association.com/)

Credit: Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

See 1099 Programs at AP Now at https://www.ap-now.com/public/1099-Resources-for-2020.cfm

He begins discussing the new 1099 form, the 1099 NEC. This will be used starting with the reporting done in January 2021 for some of the information formerly reported on the 1099 MISC. So, of course, that means a new 1099 MISC form as well. These forms are anything but simple to fill out.

He then moved on to discuss the fact that the new 1099 NEC is not included in the combined Federal/State reporting system. That creates a whole new set of issues for organizations reporting.

And if you were thinking that you’d get an extension due to the state of emergency created by COVID, Mercatante warns that there is no indication the IRS will grant them (although he says it doesn’t hurt to try) nor is there any indication the introduction of the new form will be postponed. All in all, it is shaping up to be a really hectic tax reporting season/

Host: Mary Schaeffer (https://www.ap-now.com/)

Guest: Steve Mercatante (https://www.taxinformationreporting.com/ )

Credit: Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Clearly, for many, there was a change during the pandemic. Typical activity notes Larson, is not a good indicator of activity during the pandemic. She suggests that organizations might want to rethink their audit routines of card activity to make it more relevant to current conditions. She also pointed out that cards are an excellent tool for those organizations, heavily reliant on paper checks. They serve as a good alternative if there are problems getting checks issued.

She also references the importance of strong master vendor file controls around card usage.

Host: Mary Schaeffer (https://www.ap-now.com/)

Guest: Lynn Larson (https://www.recharged-education.com/)

Credit: Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Learn more about Digital Transformation Awards: https://apcon.online/awards/ 

He discussed the organization’s annual event, which this year, unfortunately, will be online, and the fact that there are 10 different categories for awards. Due to podcast time constraints, the focus was on the Digital award.

He was then nice enough to mention that AP Now’s founder would be speaking at the conference on fraud and upskilling and the new positions that are being created for those with accounts payable knowledge and skills.

The session closed with a reminder that the deadline for making nominations is close and an invitation to anyone listening to check out all the awards to see if any might be appropriate for their accounts payable team.

Host: Mary Schaeffer (https://www.ap-now.com/)

Guest: Jamie Radford (https://www.ap-association.com/)

Credit: Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Sign up for AP Now’s free twice-a-week ezine.

He then went on to discuss the various technologies used by the team to help keep them on track. It wasn’t all about invoice handling, much of it was about keeping in touch and keeping morale up. My favorite was his instruction to the staff to go out and find something on YouTube that showed something Teams could do that the others didn’t know.

He pointed out that if ever there was a time to make the case for new technology, it was now. He offered some tips on how to do that.

He ended the conversation with some tips on how to move forward through these unusual times as well as a promise to return for a future podcast.

Host: Mary Schaeffer (https://www.ap-now.com/)

Credit: Music: https://www.purple-planet.com