Applied Net 2024 is right around the corner! Gear up for four days of education with this session preview from Sue Good. Read on as she shares highlights from her session, which will educate attendees on taking the correct steps to ensure their payables are in balance and current.
ACN: What is your background on your session’s subject? What excites you most about being in this field?
Sue Good (SG): As a former agency comptroller, I’ve been reconciling premium payables since my The Agency Manager (TAM) days beginning in 1999. I learned how to do it correctly in TAM (after doing it wrong at the beginning) and carried that knowledge to Epic as a consultant. The beauty of Epic accounting is the accuracy of the financials if the basic steps are followed correctly. These steps are invoicing, receipts, reconciliations and disbursements. Accounting should always balance, and it will, if it’s done right the first time.
Agency owners look to the accounting department and their financials for accurate data to manage cashflow and forecasting. In my session, attendees will gain a better understanding of how the data flows in Epic are invaluable to an agency.
ACN: What can attendees look forward to during your session?
SG: Attendees will learn how transactions get to premium payables, so they will then understand how to clean them up if there’s a problem. There are three steps to follow to ensure the premium payables are in balance and current. Additionally, attendees will learn which reports to use or edit in Epic to ensure payables are in balance with the unpaid items in Epic, are not past their due date, and balance to the balance sheet.
Many accounting staff in agencies have inherited a mess, and don’t understand the proper process for cleaning it up. This session will help with translating standard accounting lingo to insurance accounting lingo and will spell out the steps to do the cleanup.
ACN: Is there a particular topic in your session you think is especially interesting?
SG: My session will cover using the ME-Balancing premium payables report to get started on the three steps to ensure your payables are clean and current. Yes, just being “in balance” is not the end of the process. We need to know how old the unpaid items are, and if the total GL balance on the report matches the balance sheet. We will spend a lot of time discussing this report in our session.
ACN: What is a highlight or two you hope attendees will take away from your session?
SG: I hope attendees no longer dread reconciling their premium payables, and know if they do it right the first time, life is good. Understanding that step one of reconciling premium payables starts with invoicing can be a challenge for accounting staff since this is usually done by the operations side of the agency. Helping operations teams understand the importance of accurate invoicing will go a long way to making life simpler for accounting. My goal for attendees is that it becomes a daily habit for them to follow the three steps to process payables correctly and ensure accuracy of their payables.
Sue Good is a senior consultant with over 35 years of insurance accounting experience, including 11 years with Applied Epic. Formerly an agency comptroller, Sue specializes in accounting, workflows, reports and data integrity, helping agency owners manage and grow their businesses effectively. She has assisted over 500 agencies with Applied Systems products and shares her expertise as a master presenter at Applied Net national conferences and webinars.