Top Ten Ways to Help Lower the Cost of Your Accounting Services

10.Use ARC’s Audit BPA.  When possible, use ARC’s audit blanket purchase agreement to procure audit services. Agencies may be able to reduce their direct audit costs through the use of this service. The audit firms that ARC has established relationships with are familiar with our systems and procedures, thus permitting audits to be conducted more efficiently and more economically.

9.Use ARC-recommended best practices.  Use payroll banking for travel reimbursements. For most payroll providers, ARC can keep employee bank account changes in sync with the accounts used for payroll purposes, when agencies choose to require travel reimbursements be made to the same bank accounts as salaries.  Correct payroll accounting by submitting timecard corrections instead of requesting corrections to the payroll data in the EOR system. This leaves a simpler audit trail and eliminates the confusion or duplication if a subsequent timecard correction is made, in addition to reducing processing times.

8.Simplify reporting needs.  Reduce the number of general ledger (GL) lines. Both the number of transactions and the accounting structure influence the volume of GL lines. Evaluate your accounting structure to determine if it is more complex than it needs to be. Reducing the available combination of accounting codes will help reduce the number of GL lines required for your accounting.

7.Simplify business processes.  Reduce the number of transaction such as invoices, IPACs, AR documents, manual obligations, same day payments, accrual lines, economy act agreements, budget document lines, etc., as ARC manually enters these transactions into Oracle. This may be difficult to do, but sometimes there are opportunities to consolidate vendor bills into monthly bills, consolidate purchasing within your organization, plan acquisitions, or reengineer internal business processes to reduce the number of transactions.  Reduce the number of non-CCR vendors because they require separate procedures and are more time-consuming to add and maintain.

6.Use ARC-created Discoverer Reports and minimize Discoverer Plus Users  Review the access levels of Discoverer users. Users that have Viewer access are easier to support than users that have Plus User access.  ARC Accounting prefers to design reports for agencies as opposed to agency users doing it themselves.

5.Go electronic wherever possible.  Provide data to ARC in an electronic form, such as loader formats, whenever possible. Transactions that do not flow through feeder systems such as PRISM, GovTrip, and CitiDirect are manually keyed into Oracle by ARC staff. When ARC can upload the data rather than manually enter it, staff savings are realized. Examples include budget plans, corrections to accounting codes, and AR activity from customer agency systems.

4.Eliminate unnecessary system users.  Promptly remove users that exit the agency or change positions, and also look for other opportunities to reduce the number of users.

3.Reduce exception processing by ARC.  Wrong accounting codes are placed on source transactions when users are not careful, are not properly trained on how to use accounting codes, or are working with overly complex accounting structures.  Suspense funds are used due to lack of disciplined purchasing or approval processes, requiring repeated handling of transactions.  Inaccurate accounting codes are assigned to purchase card transactions when cardholders and/or approving officials fail to reconcile and approve their purchase card statements.  Funds controls are set low, requiring frequent reprogramming of funds to allow transactions to post.

2.Use the purchase card to the greatest extent possible.  The purchase card process is completely automated, requiring little manual intervention by ARC to process the related payments. ARC’s cost for purchase card transactions is a fraction of the cost of processing a manual invoice.

1.Use other ARC services to the degree possible.  Accounting services is tightly integrated with procurement, travel and human resources. Efficiencies are gained when ARC performs related services.