Sat.Jul 25, 2020 - Fri.Jul 31, 2020

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Common Accounting Mistakes: Government Edition - Issue #2: Budgeting

SMBAccountant

Budgets are necessary for any business. They help develop strategy, control costs, and are a great internal control. Many small businesses have difficulty developing a budget, especially during their startup or high growth periods. Budgets may be the most artful part of accounting. They are a best guess, and a goal to work towards. Government contractors have an even harder and more dire concern when it comes to cost plus contracts.

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IRS Enables Millions to Qualify for the $100,000 Grab & Repay

Bharmal&Associates

IRS Enables Millions to Qualify for the $100,000 Grab & Repay. New IRS guidance expands the possibilities for what is an adverse COVID-19 impact on you for purposes of taking up to $100,000 out of your retirement accounts and repaying it without penalties. First, let’s look at the rules as they existed before this new IRS guidance. The CARES Act created the first set of favorable rules, and those rules are still in play.

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India’s Digital Payments Platform Hits $1.34B In June Transaction Volumes

PYMNTS

India has embraced its model for digital payments so much that it intends to take it global. Since its debut four years ago, India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the instant payment system developed by the National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that facilitates inter-bank transactions, has propelled the growth of online payments, the Financial Times (FT) reported.

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Surviving 5 Recessions As An Entrepreneur

GrowthForceBlog

GrowthForce CEO Stephen King, sat down with Chris Reynolds of The Business Method Podcast to discuss his experience in Surviving 5 Recessions as an Entrepreneur. Stephen King shared key steps to take when navigating through a recession , and some of the major lessons he learned as a CEO facing his 6th recession.

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Building a Business Case for Finance Automation

Speaker: Danny Gassaway and Wayne Richards

Finance leaders are prioritizing efficiency and digital transformation, yet many hesitate to automate due to uncertainty. Without a clear understanding of its impact, organizations risk falling behind competitors who are leveraging automation to drive productivity and cost savings. Join Wayne Richards and Danny Gassaway from AvidXchange for a practical guide on bringing accounts payable (AP) automation to your organization.

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Common Accounting Mistakes: Government Edition - Issue #2: Budgeting

SMBAccountant

Budgets are necessary for any business. They help develop strategy, control costs, and are a great internal control. Many small businesses have difficulty developing a budget, especially during their startup or high growth periods. Budgets may be the most artful part of accounting. They are a best guess, and a goal to work towards. Government contractors have an even harder and more dire concern when it comes to cost plus contracts.

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IRS Provides Clarification on PPP Loan Forgiveness for the Self-Employed

Bharmal&Associates

IRS Provides Clarification on PPP Loan Forgiveness for the Self-Employed. How much is clarity worth? A lot, a whole lot. And how much is making things easier worth? Of course, it’s a lot, a whole lot, too. We now have both the new (a) clarity and (b) easy road to Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness for the self-employed with no employees.

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IT's Guide To Managing Your Remote Employees

GrowthForceBlog

In recents discussions with the IT team, we uncover answers to pressing questions during this time when companies are transitioning to more remote staff.

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Additional COVID-19 Relief for the Real Estate Industry

Katz,Sapper&Miller

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law earlier this year, provided multiple forms of economic relief for the real estate industry in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The IRS has recently announced updates to this legislation, as well as updates to real estate-friendly legislation included in 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).

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COVID-19 Relief if You Work Abroad or Travel to the U.S to Work

Bharmal&Associates

COVID-19 Relief if You Work Abroad or Travel to the U.S to Work. If the federal tax you pay is dependent on where you are physically located, then COVID-19 likely has thrown a wrench in your physical tax location (and tax situation). If you were living abroad and had to return to the U.S. because of COVID-19, you may wonder if you’ll have a big tax bill for failing to meet the foreign earned income exclusion requirements.

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AutoX: Why Driverless Cars Are Ready To Hit The Road

PYMNTS

Tests of truly autonomous self-driving vehicles have been uneven at best, but with each scraped test hubcap, the concept draws closer to reality. Major automakers are in, with Toyota backing autonomous driving startup Pony.ai and Fiat Chrysler striking a deal with AutoX , the Hong Kong-based firm that has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) platform for driverless vehicles.

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Fall In Love With the Month-End Close

It's the time of year to give our close process some TLC. Join us in this one hour webinar where we discuss how to adopt leading practices and infuse technology into the month-end close process to improve our experience and increase our productivity during month-end and quarter-end close. Learning Objectives: This course's objective is to understand how the month-end close can be improved with automation and adoption of leading practices.

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Bank Of China Advises Country’s Banks To Avoid SWIFT Messaging

PYMNTS

With the economic and political battles between the U.S. and China heating to a boil, one of China’s top banks is urging financial institutions (FIs) to cut their use of the SWIFT financial messaging network for cross-border transactions. The bank’s messaging applies to Hong Kong and Macau as well. With U.S. sanctions against China looming, state lenders there have reportedly been developing contingency plans.

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Banks, FinTechs Find New Models To Mesh Their Strengths

PYMNTS

The bank-FinTech collaboration model is often about wielding digital-native FinTech solutions to fit within bank offerings. Yet this week’s look at the latest tie-ups reveals new models of collaboration, including FinTechs expanding their footprint within banking, and wielding banks to fit within their own tech solutions. Kabbage Steps Into Banking.

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NowRX CEO: Why DTC Pharmacy Is An Easier Pill For Consumers To Swallow

PYMNTS

Large pharmacy chains selling mixed merchandise are a mainstay of life throughout the developed world. Familiar planograms with the pharmacy in back, pulling shoppers through rows of candy and cosmetics to get their medicine is an everyday routine. Or it was. Big Pharmacy’s reliance on the sale of non-pharmacy products — a strategy that’s worked for years — may now be an Achilles’ heel in a post-pandemic battle for prescription drug market share, where waiting on pharmacy lines with sick people

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Payments And Platforms Play Well Together

PYMNTS

As virtual marketplaces displace (and replace) the physical variety at a dizzying pace, payments speed and security are paramount concerns. When transactions and payments occur cross-border, those concerns are doubled. Companies want and need more visibility into cross-border payments, and with the blastoff of eCommerce in 2020, those needs grow daily.

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Navigating Payroll Compliance: Future-Proofing Payroll in an Evolving Regulatory Landscape

Speaker: Jennifer Hill

Payroll compliance is a cornerstone of business success, yet for small and midsize businesses, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of federal, state, and local regulations. Mistakes can lead to costly penalties and operational disruptions, making it essential to adopt advanced solutions that ensure accuracy and efficiency.

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Travel Management Firm CWT Pays $4.5M In Bitcoin To Hackers

PYMNTS

Corporate travel manager CWT paid $4.5 million worth of bitcoin in ransom this week to hackers who said they seized control of 30,000 company computers and two terabytes of data, Reuters reported on Friday (July 31). The news service said it learned details of the negotiations between Minnetonka, Minnesota-based CWT and the unidentified hackers because the talks played out in a publicly viewable chat room.

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Venmo’s New Boss On Its Next Chapter

PYMNTS

“Be careful what you wish for – you just might get it.”. That ancient proverb, one oft-repeated by mothers and fathers to their daughters and sons over generations, also applies to PayPal’s Darrell Esch’s path to his new role as general manager of Venmo. A 10-year PayPal vet, most recently in the role of senior vice president of credit, Esch told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster that he was once asked years earlier if there was any other job at the company that he’d like to have.

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Wells Fargo Plans Cost-Saving Measures, Including Layoffs

PYMNTS

Wells Fargo is engaging in significant cost-cutting, including layoffs, in a bid to become more lean amid the pandemic-induced financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. The total number of layoffs hasn’t been finalized yet, according to WSJ, but they are expected to be in the tens of millions, although they won’t all happen at the same time.

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The Invoice Lands In The Corporate Cyber Fraud Spotlight

PYMNTS

Although there are countless ways a cybercriminal can swindle funds from a company — either from the outside or within — it’s often the invoice at the center of the crime. This week’s Data Digest looks at the latest in B2B payments fraud and the invoice’s role in supplier payment redirect scams, credential theft and more. 43 percent of employees admit to mistakes that have caused cybersecurity repercussions, a new study has found, according to OnRec reported.

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Next-Level Fraud Prevention: Strategies for Today’s Threat Landscape

Speaker: Sierre Lindgren

Fraud is a battle that every organization must face – it’s no longer a question of “if” but “when.” Every organization is a potential target for fraud, and the finance department is often the bullseye. From cleverly disguised emails to fraudulent payment requests, the tactics of cybercriminals are advancing rapidly. Drawing insights from real-world cases and industry expertise, we’ll explore the vulnerabilities in your processes and how to fortify them effectively.

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Lemonade CFO On The Insurance Industry’s Innovation Dilemma

PYMNTS

The insurance industry has been bogged down by sluggish service and even slower payouts for decades, and while policyholders have certainly weathered their fair share of friction from the sector’s legacy incumbents, those insurance companies themselves have also suffered from a lack of digitization and automation. It’s a landscape that has created an opportune environment for technological innovation.

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FinTech Dave Reports Data Breach Involving 7.5M Users

PYMNTS

Hackers boasting that they have “cracked” some of the hashed passwords stolen from digital banking aggregator Dave may be one of the most disturbing elements to emerge from the cyberheist that exposed the private information of millions of users, a top expert notes. The FinTech on Saturday (July 25) confirmed the data breach after reports emerged that details involving as many as 7.5 million banking users had been exposed on a forum used by hackers to sell and swap ill-gotten data.

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B2B Payments’ Pivot To Digital

PYMNTS

“Fundamental changes to the B2B payments landscape are taking place today, faster than ever before, helping the ecosystem eliminate inefficient B2B payments processes.”. Access to capital hasn’t been this tight since the market meltdown of 2008, so motivated players are finding better, faster ways of moving B2B funds especially. “Today, visibility and speed of paying suppliers — and getting paid — are critical for businesses,” said Kevin Phalen , global head of Visa Business Solutions at Visa.

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Boomers And Seniors Are Shifting To Digital Shopping, Too

PYMNTS

Millennials and Generation Z consumers get all of the attention when it comes to their changing digital habits amid the pandemic. Google the words “millennials shopping shift,” and page after page of listicles, think pieces and how-to articles appear. But do the same with “baby boomer shopping shift,” and one will find about a half a page of dedicated articles — and a lot of other pieces comparing boomers to millennials or talking about generational shopping shifts more broadly.

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Cash Flow Secrets Every Upskilled CPA Should Know

Speaker: Debra L. Robinson

CPAs know the drill: taxes, compliance, rinse, repeat. But what about the sneaky cash flow that’s quietly messing with your organization’s success? It’s time to step into the spotlight and expose the “dirty little secrets” of cash flow to fuel strategic growth. By upskilling your accounting practices and shifting focus from tax compliance to the strategic movement of money, you can transform your role from reactive accountant to proactive financial strategist.

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Advancing With Collaboration, Cooperation And Innovation

PYMNTS

“Digitization has helped support remittance market continuity in the face of reduced mobility. We also believe money transfers relying on informal or unregulated routes are converting to formal money transfers, and may even help stabilize the market as travel restrictions likely remain.”. Markets are seeking stability, though not necessarily finding it, as business essentially “feels” its way forward in a bizarre, post-pandemic topography.

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The Role Of Payments In Higher Ed’s Great Digital Shift

PYMNTS

Universities are all about giving students learning experiences, but having one themselves isn’t usually standard operating procedure. Ever since schools worldwide began shutting their campuses due to the pandemic, nothing in higher education has been normal, as Sharon Butler , executive vice president of global education at Flywire , told Karen Webster.

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Why B2B Firms Must Take The Wheel In Payment Processing Strategy

PYMNTS

In the midst of a surge of new software solutions and FinTech platforms available to B2B companies, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system continues to retain its reputation as the single source of truth within an organization, a sort of motherboard to connect and streamline many workflows into one. While third-party solution providers often recognize the importance of ERP integrations, there is no single, perfect tool to eliminate friction entirely — and no single ERP can address every c

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Amazon Crushes Earnings As Online Grocery Sales And Prime Viewership Soar

PYMNTS

To say that Amazon posted a good quarter on Thursday (July 30) is a bit like saying Michael Jordan had a good career. By any metrics, the company’s earnings were off the charts, and they hardly came as a result of cost-cutting. The company almost doubled its revenue and profit numbers while spending more than $9 billion on capital improvement projects.

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Profit in the Details: Rethinking Spend for Monumental Impact

Speaker: Aaron Berson

Managing spend is more than a cost cutting exercise – it's a pathway to smarter decisions that unlock efficiency and drive growth. By understanding and refining the spending process, financial leaders can empower their organizations to achieve more with less. Explore the art of balancing financial control with operational growth. From uncovering hidden inefficiencies to designing workflows that scale your business, we’ll share strategies to align your organization’s spending with its strategic g

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New PYMNTS/Visa Poll: SMBs Want (And Need) Instant Access To Payments

PYMNTS

It’s been long said that small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are the backbone of the American economy. That’s hard to argue with considering more than 99 percent of American firms are SMBs, 49 percent of the population works for one and they’re responsible for 46 percent of private-sector output, according to Small Business Administration data.

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From Paper To Digital To Money On Demand: Who’ll Lead The Way?

PYMNTS

Banks missed out on the first big wave of digital payments, but they don’t have to miss out on the next, Ingo Money CEO Drew Edwards told Karen Webster in a recent conversation. “The entire [digital payments] industry ends up being created outside the banks on products that should have been developed by them,” Edwards said. “The First Datas down to the Stripes built the eCommerce structure and left big banks playing catch-up and to partner.”.

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eBay CEO Outlines Growth Plan As Company Profits From Digital Shift

PYMNTS

The newly stripped-down eBay held its first earnings call on Tuesday (July 28) since announcing plans to sell its classified-ad business to Adevinta for $9.2 billion. While eBay’s second quarter results were stellar, the event was more notable for the unveiling of new CEO Jamie Iannone ’s vision for the company. By the numbers, the pandemic-driven digital shift has been good for the company, as revenue for the quarter was $2.9 billion, up 18 percent over 2019.

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New Approaches To Payroll And Retail Delivery

PYMNTS

The digital shift has been more seismic than subtle for companies such as logistics firm Shipt , which has seen a massive business spike even in the context of the pandemic. And in next-gen payments, companies and workers are seeking quicker and more flexible payroll solutions , particularly in a time of uncertainty. Companies may have to adjust the two-week payment cycle to a process that meets the changing needs of the workforce.

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Navigating Bleisure Travel: A Guide for Mid-Sized Companies

Bleisure travel — where employees combine work and leisure — has been around since the advent of corporate travel and is here to stay. Successful bleisure policies strike a balance between employee preferences and company goals — workers report a 64% improvement in work-life balance, while companies benefit from reduced travel costs and increased workforce innovation.