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Cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated in targeting businesses with scams focused on business email compromise. According to a report in Accountants Daily, “Each cyber crime costs a small business $40,000 on average and the number of attacks leapt 13 per cent last year to the equivalent of one every seven minutes, the Australian Cyber Security Centre reveals in its 2021-22 report.”

It is important that accounts departments pay close attention to any changes that may ring alarm bells, especially if they have received an email from the supplier saying their account details have changed.

EBS aims to provide peace of mind when making vendor payments and in this article, we look at how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central localisation extension: ebs-plus does just that.

How ebs-plus helps to manage vendor payments

When using ebs-plus, a user can run a Vendor Bank Account Change Log Report when undergoing the Vendor Payment process or at any time it is required. This report will highlight if any changes have been made to a Vendors’ bank account details, as well as the date the change was made and the user who made the changes. This report can be used to compare to any documentation provided by a Vendor to notify you of a change in their bank account details to ensure the details recorded on the Vendor Card are correct.

Vendor Bank Account Change Log Report

To run this report, search for Vendor Bank Account Change Log (ebs-plus) and enter a date range.

vendor bank account change log

During the Vendor Payment process, the Detailed Payment Report(ebs-plus) can be run from the Payment Journals, which lists the Vendors’ bank account details recorded in Business Central on their Vendor Card, as well as details of the invoices being paid. This report can be used to cross-check with the Vendors’ bank accounts detailed listed on their invoices to ensure the aba file generated will have accurate information and funds will be paid into the correct account. 

If you are unsure if a Vendors’ bank account change is valid, is It is strongly recommended you confirm directly with the Vendor before making payment to the new account.

Enhanced Workflows

Included in ebs-plus is enhancements to the standard Business Central approval workflows. If the New Vendor Approval is enabled on the ebs-plus Setup page, when a new Vendor is created it will be marked as blocked and Purchase Invoices cannot be raised against the Vendor until it has been approved as per the workflow setup.

In addition to this, the New Vendor Bank Account Approval workflow can also be turned on, which means that any changes made to the bank accounts of existing Vendors will need to be approved before payments can be made to the Vendor.

 

Built in Audit Trails

The benefit of using a secure financial management system such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is that a full audit trail is kept of any changes. Once a document is posted it cannot be changed or deleted. If an Invoice needs to be corrected, a Credit Note will need to be raised and applied to the Invoice. If a journal needs to be corrected, the reversal will be recorded in the G/L Registers archive, listing the date and time the reversal was processed, as well as the user who posted the reversal.

 

How to protect yourself from having your invoices intercepted

Cybercriminals have been taking advantage of people working from home, who’s security setup is lower when compared to being in an office environment.  It is important that you have solid anti-virus software installed on your computer to detect any issues of malware hacking attempts and it is strongly advised to have two-factor authentication setup to ensure no unauthorised access to your systems.

Talk to EBS about how Business Central can be extended to improve your invoice processing and workflows.

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