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7/26/2010 - KCAFP Wins Two Awards at 2010 Regional Officers Meeting
Len Thompson and Jennifer Bailey attended the Regional Officers Meeting (ROM) in Washington DC on July 8- 10.
ROM is a gathering of regional officers from across the country and Canada, coordinated by the national AFP and the ROM committee. There were 56 attendees representing 33 regional associations. Len Thompson was a member of the ROM committee. There were sessions with government updates, an overall of the AFP today, and great forums to learn what other regional associations are doing. There were roundtables that actively discussed topics such as membership, communication with members, partnering, conferences, marketing, etc. There is great networking amongst the attendees.
One of the most valuable aspects of the meeting is the sharing of ideas in the form of the Idea Fair. KCAFP submitted entries in the Best Meeting and Best New Idea for Partnering categories.
We are very happy to announce that KCAFP won first place for Best Meeting, which was our meeting with Deffenbaugh, touring the MRF. KCAFP also won runner-up for the Best Idea for Partnering, which was our Spring Seminar at the Federal Reserve Bank.
There are two trophies that will be displayed at the September meeting!
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4/14/2010 - Words from the President
Words from the President
The Kansas City Association for Financial Professionals is hosting its annual Spring Seminar May 13th and 14th at The Federal Reserve Bank Kansas City MO
Please register for this very informative and exciting conference. We were so excited that the Federal Reserve Bank will be hosting this event for us. The conference will be a day and a half.
We know budgets are tight, so conference registration rates did not go up this year. Please take advantage of the discounted price of $230 for members. This is an economical way to maintain 12 CTP credits and get access to informative topics such as: New Customer Transfer Plus for WIRES, ACH Rules Update and The Impact of Imaging on Check Float, just to name a few. This year we have put together one of the best set of speakers our organization has ever had, and we have a link to our mircosite for the conference
Register now at www.kcafp.org
I look forward to seeing you there!
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4/1/2010 - 2010 SPRING SEMINAR
Please click HERE to register for the 2010 KCAFP Spring Seminar at the KCFRB on May 13 & 14
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2/18/2009 - Need some Career Advice?
Did you KCAFP maintains a series of articles on Career advice, including our latest: How to Ask for a Raise -- and Get It! Check it out in the Members' Section under Career Opportunities/Job Search Assistance.
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5/19/2007 - Doing More with Less: Strategies for a Lean Treasury Dept.
From the May issue of AFP’s Futures in Finance newsletter
A recent roundtable discussion led by Callaway Golf treasurer Rhys Williams focused on how to identify and strategize the key aspects of a treasury department. It was part of AFP’s Retail Forum held in Seattle in April.
The first step in analyzing a treasury department is determining what the responsibilities are. Among those mentioned by participants were internal consultant, cash management, reconciliation, merchant services (i.e. credit card acceptances), debt and portfolio management, bank relationships, FX, business development, data capturing for accounting and forecasting. The list can be much longer depending on resources and alignment. For example in today’s global treasury environment, risk management and strategic initiatives are often found high on the list.
Hiring and training staff is critical to assure everyone plays their part to the best advantage. It sometimes is expeditious to hire a “plug and play” employee – someone who has been trained and can step into the position with little learning curve. It is also helpful to identify what your staff continuity needs are. How would they like to grow with the department?
As a department head, it is always good to have a succession plan. Have candidates in mind for future promotion. Groom them by cross-training in other areas of accounting. At Callaway, Williams and his colleagues developed a Lunch n’ Learn program where monthly speakers are brought in to train on topics including FX Exposure and Hedging.
Of course, AFP webinars, seminars, conference sessions and training all offer opportunities for members to advance their careers.
Electronic tools can contribute to streamlining an operation. The basics include Microsoft Excel and Access. Several of the participants used Access extensively for everything from Bank Report Cards to AR Working Capital and Sales Tax Payments to FX tracking.
Treasury workstations broke significant ground in cash management and now they have become available through the Internet to many more organizations. They manage debt, FX, reconciliation including credit cards.
Web sites are another electronic tool that has saved time and money. Bank sites are easy to navigate with multiple applications and Sharepoint from Microsoft is an Internet application that has streamlined processing.
Informational tools online such as Bloomberg and Thomson One bring key financial information in a quick and reliable way.
Portals allow the posting of internal Web reporting, operating manuals and intranet sites.
Certainly a department head can count on the staff for additional resources with more staff hours and longer project implementation. But outsourcing has become a popular solution to budgetary constraints and short term needs. This includes consultants, treasury/accounting functions, bankers, brokers, and services, such as: lockboxes, money management and FX management.
Ultimately automation is a key player in the streamlining of treasury departments. According to Williams, “the demands of today affect the goals of tomorrow.”
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4/22/2007 - AFP Urges Federal Reserve Action to Reduce Late-Day Fedwires
AFP recommended that the Federal Reserve Board assign a high priority to reducing the incidence of late-day Fedwire funds transfers. In a March 14 comment letter, AFP reported that the increase in late-in-the day wire transfers has added costs and introduced inefficiencies in large-value corporate financial transactions.
Because of changes in U.S. payments systems and growth in the value and volume of Fedwires, financial institutions have shifted the sending of large Fedwire payments to later in the day in order to manage their intraday liquidity and daylight overdrafts. In its request for comment, the Fed noted that late-day wires increase the risk to financial markets that payments will not be settled in a timely manner if significant operational disruptions were to occur later in the day.
AFP stated that wire transfer delays caused by financial institutions managing their daylight overdraft positions have a cascading, negative effect on corporate settlement of financial transactions. For example, when a corporation borrows on a line of credit or sells commercial paper, the wire with incoming funds often does not arrive until late in the day. Because this places the company in a daylight overdraft position, its outbound wires to a third party are delayed.
AFP noted that companies incur actual costs and opportunity costs because of delayed wire transfers. When incoming wire transfers are received late in the day, companies miss investment opportunities that would otherwise have been available. Or they may receive lower rates on investments that could not be made in the morning. A real estate closing may be cancelled if a wire transfer is not received on a timely basis. Funding for controlled disbursement checks, both payroll and accounts payable, is delayed.
Businesses use wire transfers because they are secure, same-day and final, and they expect these payments to be made on a timely, efficient basis. But companies now pay a heavy price because of the uncertainties and increasing costs of Fedwires that are not completed until late in the day. It is essential that the Federal Reserve evaluate alternatives and introduce changes in market practices, operations and policies to reduce intraday liquidity, credit and operational risks and improve the efficiency of the Fedwire funds transfer system.
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3/17/2007 - 2007 AFP Payments Fraud Survey
This follow up to AFP's previous work on Payments Fraud shows that a majority of organizations coontinue to be victims of payments fraud and the incidence of fraud continues to climb). This report highlights the reasons why defending their organizations against fraud is a top concern for treasury and finance professionals. Nearly three-quarters of organizations experienced attempted or actual payments fraud in 2006, up from sixty-eight percent reported in a previous AFP survey. This survey was underwritten by the Electronics Payments Network (EPN).
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12/18/2006 - The Money Market Expo - March 19-22 in Orlando
MMX is the only forum dedicated exclusively to the needs of money market professionals.
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10/11/2006 - AFP Comments on Federal Reserve Proposal for Collecting NSF Fees Electronically
In a September 29, 2006, comment letter to the Federal Reserve Board, AFP recommended more uniformity and less complexity in the notice that payees must give consumers when they want to collect a fee via ACH debit for payments returned for insufficient or uncollected funds (NSF).
In amending Reg. E, the Fed had ruled earlier this year that payees may collect a service fee via electronic funds transfer (EFT) for an NSF check or ACH if they provide notice to the consumer that they plan to collect the fee by EFT, along with the amount of the fee, and the consumer goes forward with the underlying transaction. At point of sale, the Fed requires that notice about the fee, and the dollar amount of the fee, be posted in a prominent location and a copy of the notice be provided to the consumer at the time of the transaction. In accounts receivable transactions, the notice may appear on a billing statement or invoice.
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9/2/2006 - SWIFT Speeds Streamlining of Electronic Transactions
In a breakthrough that may increase streamlining communication between banks and corporations, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) has introduced a many-to-many closer user group designed to dramatically increase the flow of information between multiple economic entities.
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9/2/2006 - Visa and Mastercard Combine Forces to Protect Consumers
In an age increasingly fraught with concerns over identity theft, the world's two biggest credit card companies are combining efforts to protect the privacy of consumers. Last week, both Visa and Mastercard announced that in the next month or two they would unveil detailed security rules to combat a disturbing trend exemplified by the revelation of a recent survey that asserted identity theft as the second highest fear among adults.
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6/16/2006 - Recertification Reminder
AFP must receive your continuing education credits by June 30, 2006, in order for you to retain your CTP/CCM certification. If you do not earn your 36 credits by June 30th or request an extension by July 5th, you will lose your designation and must retake and pass the CTP examination if you wish to again hold the CTP certification. CTP and CCM certifications are valid on three-year cycles, beginning July 1 in the year you passed the exam through June 30 of the third year.
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6/7/2006 - Commercial Banks Increasingly Link Corporate Credit to the Purchase of Other Bank Services
Commercial banks frequently make access to credit contingent upon the purchase of other financial services despite assertions by regulatory bodies to the contrary, according to the "2004 Credit Access Survey," released June 9, 2006 by the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP).
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6/7/2006 - Lease Accounting Is FASB's Next Hot Potato
A forthcoming decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) will cast the spotlight on lease accounting. The FASB is planning to look at the practice, which currently does not require companies to report hundreds of billions of dollars in future lease payments as a liability on their balance sheets.
Should the board require companies to record lease-related assets and debts on their balance sheets, the decision would alter many of the metrics commonly used to examine companies. Such a decision would also force companies to reexamine how they finance operations and lease arrangements for equipment, vehicles, and other assets.
Leading the charge against this accounting reform are companies with substantial leasing obligations and the leasing industry.
William Bosco, who sits on the accounting committee for the Equipment Leasing Association, argues that a FASB rule change would not provide a projection of a company's future cash needs after current leases run out and would conflict with how the Internal Revenue Service, bankruptcy law, and the uniform commercial code treat leases.
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5/8/2006 - NACHA Approves Back Office Conversion Rule
A NACHA rule, approved May 1, 2006, will enable organizations to accept checks at points of purchase or at manned bill payment locations and convert the checks to ACH debits during bank office processing. The rule will also allow financial institutions to convert eligible checks that they receive in an image file to ACH debits. Checks with an auxiliary on-us field in the MICR line and checks in an amount greater than $25,000 are not eligible for conversion to ACH debits. The application becomes effective on March 16, 2007, and uses a new Standard Entry Class Code, BOC (Bank Office Conversion Entries).
AFP supported the concept of back office conversion in a comment letter to NACHA on the rule proposal. AFP noted that the process would provide retailers and billers with a more efficient method of processing checks, reduce expenses and accelerate cash flow.
The payer’s authorization to convert the check would be obtained through a notice displayed at check-out or wherever the check [called a "source document"] is presented. When the source document is presented by the payer, it is deemed to be the payer’s authorization to convert the item to an ACH debit. A copy of the notice must also be provided to the payer. Details about the new rule will be available from NACHA.
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5/6/2006 - CTP Exam Preparation Information
Recommended by AFP as your comprehensive exam preparation resource.
The AFP Learning System: Treasury programs provide users with the complete body of knowledge tested on the CTP exam along with an abundance of tools that optimize your study time.
Whether you chose the self-directed learning format or an instructor-led class, you will benefit from the 800 text-based review questions and exercises, the 48 online calculation problems and the bank of 600 online questions that replicate the looks and feel of the questions you'll see on the computer-based CTP exam.
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