Safeguarding Your Finances: Talking AP and AR Fraud with Debra Richardson and Monica Brooks

In this special episode recorded live at the IOFM Fall Conference and Expo, Debra Richardson and Monica Brooks share their expertise and insights into fraud prevention in AP and AR. With decades of combined experience in AP and AR management, Debra and Monica explore the critical importance of fraud protection and the value of IOFM certification for finance professionals.

Debra and Monica also share their personal journey as friends who met through IOFM, highlighting the power of professional connections within the finance community. This episode is a must-listen for AP and AR professionals looking to strengthen fraud prevention measures and become certified leaders in their field.

Monica Brooks

Monica is a dynamic speaker who inspires others to reach their full potential, both professionally and personally. She excels in helping to maximize individuals’ capability in any situation, whether it’s facing new challenges, working with diverse teams, or receiving feedback and coaching. Monica has first-hand successful leadership experience: Before venturing out on her own, she led a team and increased her team members’ overall engagement while helping them build their proficiency. She now applies that experience and knowledge to helping others become more effective in their roles. Monica is certified with Franklin-Covey to facilitate “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and has led a diverse group of managers through fundamental development programs. Her special spark is sure to leave you feeling inspired and motivated!

Debra Richardson

Debra is an Accounts Payable speaker, consultant, and trainer with over 20 years of experience in AP, AR, general ledger, and financial reporting for Fortune 500 companies including Verizon, General Motors, and Aramark.

For ten years, Debra has focused on Global Vendor Maintenance, and implemented a vendor self-registration portal for 140k+ global vendors across five ERPs. In her consultancy, she focuses on authentication techniques, internal controls and best practices to prevent fraud in the vendor master file.

Debra now focuses on helping accounts payable teams protect the vendor master file from fraud. She has a weekly blog and hosts a weekly podcast: “Putting the AP in hAPpy” and is the Co-President of the Central Atlantic Region IOFM Chapter.

Transcription

Grace Chlosta: Welcome to the IOFM podcast. This is a podcast for accounts payable and accounts receivable professionals who want to stay in the know with current AP and AR trends and ideas. We'll be interviewing professionals in this space on a wide variety of subjects, including automation, artificial intelligence, career growth, compliance, leadership, and much more.

Today we'll be interviewing Debra Richardson. Debra is an accounts payable speaker, consultant, and trainer with over 20 years of experience in AP, AR, general ledger, and financial reporting for Fortune 500 companies, including Verizon, General Motors, and Aramark.

For ten years, Debra has focused on global vendor maintenance and implemented a vendor self-registration portal for over 140 global vendors across five ERPs. In her consultancy, she focuses on authentication techniques, internal controls, and best practices to prevent fraud in the vendor master file. 

Debra now focuses on helping accounts payable teams protect the vendor master file from fraud. She has a weekly blog and hosts a weekly podcast, "Putting the AP in hAPpy," and is the copresident of the Central Atlantic Region IOFM Chapter. 

00:01:17

She'll be interviewed by Monica Brooks. Monica is a dynamic speaker who inspires others to reach their full potential, both professionally and personally. She excels in helping to maximize individuals' capability in any situation, whether it's facing new challenges, working with diverse teams, or receiving feedback and coaching. Monica has first-hand successful leadership experience: Before venturing out on her own, she led a team and increased her team members' overall engagement while helping them build their proficiency. She now applies that experience and knowledge to helping others become more effective in their roles. Monica is certified with Franklin-Covey to facilitate "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and has led a diverse group of managers through fundamental development programs. Her special spark is sure to leave you feeling inspired and motivated!

Monica Brooks: Debra, welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you here.

Debra Richardson: Hi! I'm so happy to be here. I'm really happy to be back in Las Vegas again, now for the second year in a row.

00:02:16                     

Monica Brooks: That is amazing. And we have known each other for quite a while. I'm Monica Brooks. We've presented together, and I have seen you do so many amazing things. I want to talk about that, but first talk about IOFM and this conference. This is where we initially met.

Debra Richardson: Yes, it is.

Monica Brooks: And I know that you have gone through the certification process.

Debra Richardson: Yes.

Monica Brooks: Tell me what that was like and tell me how you benefitted from it initially.

Debra Richardson: Yes. Well, first of all, I went through my initial, my first certification ever – I think it was back in 2010, and I did it online. It might've been 2013. Anyway, it was back in the day. And that certification helped me get my next job, which, by the way, helped me get into vendors and focus on vendors.

00:03:07

I got a position as an AP Senior Manager over global vendor setup and maintenance. At that time, I also had global payments as well. But that certification got me in the interview, which got me in the door, which got me the job. 

Monica Brooks: That's incredible!

Debra Richardson: So that was really good, yes.

Monica Brooks: I bet you were looking back like, that was such a great step to take, right?

Debra Richardson: Yes, it was such a great step to take. It was needed. And I have to be honest – I don't know where I found IOFM at. I think at that time, because prior to being called IOFM (the Institute of Finance and Management), they were TAPN, the Accounts Payable Network, and that's how I think I found them.

00:03:51

And anyone that has been around a few years or decades, like me, we probably remember – they probably remember that, too. But I think that's how I found them. 

But, in any event, IOFM is great now. I've got a couple of different certifications. I went back and got… The first certification was the AP Manager, the APM, and then the second certification was the APPM, which brings procurement into it. 

And then at that position that I attributed to getting because of the certifications, we had a lot of vendors. We used to send out like 30,000 1099s every year, and so I went back and got the Certified Reporting Process Specialist certification. So I have three as of right now. 

Monica Brooks: That's incredible. Tell me how your position and what you do has grown? Because I know, for both of us, it started in accounts payable. We've been to these conferences and they've been incredibly helpful, but you kind of have your little niche now. Do you want to talk about that?

00:04:54                     

Debra Richardson: I do, yes. I have my little niche in vendor maintenance because, like I said, I had that position. I was over payments for a while, but when we determined fraud was getting high, I needed to start focusing more on how to put in those authentication techniques, best practices, internal controls, vendor validations, in the global vendor setup and maintenance process to avoid fraud. I really focused just on that.

And what's really funny is that, because of segregation of duties issues, when I had both payments and vendor setup and maintenance, I actually had to choose which module I would have edit and view – not view, but edit and add access to in the system, right? Because I can't generate a payment and create a vendor. So I always chose vendors. I knew that that was where I was going to want to be. 

00:05:52

And so that turned out real well because I love the vendor space. And when it comes to fraud, when there is a fraud, even though, as an AP manager – and I know many of you out there can relate – we're working 60, 70 hours/week, we do our day job and then we go – or we respond to all types of last-minute issues and meetings and everything during the day, and then we plug up at home and do our day job. So that happened. 

But when I fraud occurs, you just get pulled out and you get voluntold that you need to put things in place so that it doesn't happen again. That's really where I started focusing on the fraud aspect. And even though I was voluntold, sometimes those things happen for a reason, because I love 'em. 

00:06:45                     

Monica Brooks: Yeah, and I think you touched on a really important thing that I don't think a lot of people realize when we hear AP. There's a lot of different aspects to accounts payable. It is not just I pay the bills or I manage the team that pays the bills. There's a lot that goes into running a really good department and a really good team, and being aware of the fraud that's happening. It's becoming more rampant. These fraudsters are finding new ways all the time. They're staying one step ahead of us. What are some tips that you initially just want to tell everybody in the AP department that you see that there's a real need to focus on when it comes to fraud?

00:07:22                     

Debra Richardson: Especially at this time of year, because we're coming into year-end close, the fraudsters know that we're going to have a higher volume because we're going to be processing invoices that have been on everybody's desk all year. We're going to be creating vendors for those invoices because the vendors haven't been created yet. So it's going to be very – the volume is going to be higher, and you're going to be asked to do things quicker, without having – without being able to put or to perform all your normal fraud-prevention strategies, validation strategies in place.

00:08:04

My biggest recommendation is to 1) slow down, and 2) don't throw all of your authentication techniques, internal controls, best practice, vendor validations out the window just because it's yearend and things have to be done quickly. Absolutely don't do that. And the reason that I say that is January – as a consultant now that works with accounts payable teams that have had fraud, January is my biggest month of the entire year because everyone contacts me or now has determined or found the fraud that happened in December. 

Monica Brooks: Interesting.

Debra Richardson: It's been like that since I've been in business. It's been about six years now.

00:08:55                     

Monica Brooks: So don't sacrifice your quality of work because of the quantity of work.

Debra Richardson: Exactly! And I'll tell you another tip, too. When I was that accounts payable senior manager processing those requests, we had 140,000 active vendors across seven different ERPs, and we processed about 2,000 requests per month. So it got worse at yearend.

So what I did is I always had – I pulled two people out. I recognized I could do that because I had 17, but we still had a large volume. But I still pulled two people out and I focused them only on the urgent vendor requests. I knew they were coming, so we had to find a way to handle it. 

00:09:43

And so what we did was, instead of sacrificing our validations and processes, fraud-prevention strategies – instead of sacrificing that, I pulled two people out and they focused on pulling those urgent requests out of the queue and just accelerated them. That's all we did. We still did everything that we needed to do for regular vendor setup or existing vendor change. We just pulled it further towards the front of the queue, and I assigned two people to do those. 

Monica Brooks: Okay, having a process in place to prevent fraud from happening.

Debra Richardson: Yes. Start now and set that process up because we know it's coming.

Monica Brooks: So when people attend the IOFM conference and they know you're a speaker, what are some of the things they get to look forward to when they attend one of your sessions?

Debra Richardson: So one of the things – and if anyone has listened to my podcast or been to any of my sessions at any of the IOFM conferences, I am always that action-oriented. I want to give you something to go back and do. So when they attend my sessions, I always give them strategies, things that they can go and immediately put in place.

00:10:55

It's those things that I think are really key that you can do at the user level, so now you don't necessarily have to go back. There's nothing wrong with getting your IT team involved and looking at platforms that can help you, but typically we don't have the ability to do that on an immediate basis. And so what I try to give is immediate takeaways that you can go back and put into place as soon as you get back to the office. 

A great example is one of my sessions this afternoon is talking about fraud that's hit your inbox in the last whatever days, and how to combat that. I give them tips on how to avoid the latest fraud that we've seen out there happening, the fraud trends that have been happening. I give user-level tips to help them avoid it. 

00:11:48                     

Monica Brooks: That's amazing. It sounds like they would really benefit not just from coming to IOFM, but also coming to your sessions. What would you say to someone who's contemplating the AP certification for managers or for specialists? What advice would you give them if they're just thinking about it?

00:12:01                     

Debra Richardson: Oh, I would say: Stop thinking about it and just go ahead and take it. Get as many certifications as you can that are appropriate for your position, or the position that you want to have. Get those certifications. The best thing that I like about them is 1) you're not just getting the education of that certification for today. You're not just getting that, but you also have a requirement to keep that certification up, which means you have to keep learning. Keeping learning is the way that we stay at least closer to the fraudsters, closer to – that's how we keep our company protected from compliance fines, because we're continuing to learn.

00:12:53

If we're talking about compliance fines, we're talking about organizations like the IRS we have to report to, which always have changes – so it's not just the education (which is great) for today, but it's the continual learning from or about topics that continue to change. 

Monica Brooks: Yes. I think it's always going to continue to change, so we'll need to stay on top of it, stay up-to-date with these things. And I love that you talked about being that lifelong learner when it comes to accounts payable, and a way into that is through the certification that IOFM offers.

Debra Richardson: Correct.

Monica Brooks: Debra, thank you so much for your time today. It was so good talking with you.

Debra Richardson: Thank you, Monica. It was great talking to you as well.

Monica Brooks: All right, take care. Bye-bye.

Grace Chlosta: Thank you so much for listening to the IOFM podcast. Remember to head on over to the Member Forum to discuss today's episode and provide ideas for our next one. And to stay up to date on IOFM's current events, both in-person and virtually, head on over to IOFM.com.