ePayables – a Sustainable Payment Solution

About the Program

Category: Financial Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2011

Multnomah County cut costs and earned money as one of the first local governments in the Pacific Northwest to implement a sustainable credit card solution to vendor payments. The ePayables solution is environmentally sustainable because it reduces paper flow and is financially sustainable because it has generated bank rebates of $100,000 annually. Account payable in Multnomah County was challenged by diminishing resources, increasing production costs, and vendor cash flow anxieties. Building on their successful use of Pcards for purchasing, Multnomah County Accounts Payable staff embraced the ePayables solution to speed the migration from check disbursements to electronic payments. Overall benefits of this solution include: faster payments to vendors, more efficient payment processing, a no-cost processing alternative to checks or ACH, decreased check fraud risk, improved payment float, increased bank rebates, and reduced administration of multiple remit addresses needed for companies currently receiving checks at multiple sites. In addition, it has produced invoice processing cost savings of about 25 percent, while effectively assuring zero risk fraud to enrolled vendors. Multnomah County, recognized by peer agencies as Pcard pioneer, continues to field (and welcomes) calls from other jurisdictions seeking information about this relatively new, innovative program.