Nervous about vendor setup and maintenance risks? This finance pro did something about it

“It’s not right, but it is a reality. … You don’t get a lot of budget attached to (vendor setup and maintenance training and tools in A/P),” said consultant, speaker and trainer Debra Richardson, APM, APPM, CPRS.

Richardson is a former controller and finance director, and the founder of Debra R Richardson LLC, which offers several free and premium-level resources for A/P professionals, including a blog, webinars and the podcast “Putting the AP in Happy.”

Sharing the story of how she launched her business in 2018 during an episode of the Women’s Leadership Today podcast, Richardson said that it was in a role as A/P senior manager of global vendor setup and maintenance and payments with a Fortune 15 company – which had an A/P department of more than 200 people – when she discovered that she had a knack for the vendor setup and maintenance process.

“I was like, ‘I love A/P.’ … My husband was like, ‘What? Why do you love A/P?'” she said.

After encountering isolated disruptions from payment fraud incidents throughout her career, Richardson began scouring the internet for A/P best practices for avoiding fraud, regulatory/compliance fines and just plain bad vendor data. But she didn’t find much related to vendor setup and maintenance that she considered useful.

“Whenever you hear about A/P or … A/P automation … you always think about invoicing and e-invoicing solutions and everything to help the invoice process. But you can’t even get to the invoice process until you have a vendor set up,” she said.

Sharing vendor setup and maintenance knowledge

Richardson felt the best way to help finance pros who work with vendors navigate what she described as a “new climate” of fraud was to share her on-the-job experience and research. “I like providing those A-to-Z steps for solving some problem,” she said.

“That’s the type of person I am and that’s the type of help that I like: ‘Don’t just fantasize and talk about what could be and what should be. … This is what you need to do and here are the steps to do it.'”

And Richardson hasn’t run out of things to talk about. For instance, there are 247 episodes of “Putting the AP in Happy” (a variation on something she used to include in her email signature).

She credited SCORE for guiding her to crucial networking opportunities, obtaining business funding, and creating a business plan and a marketing plan.