Earlier this month, I had a coffee with Rachel Fielding from Accountancy Age and we got into an interesting discussion about some of the key issues currently impacting accountants and finance managers. It got me thinking about what 2010 has in store for CFOs and their teams.

With January fast approaching, we’ll see the VAT rate in the UK rise back up to 17.5 percent. During this time of economic uncertainty, every penny counts, so it’s essential that organisations recover all that’s owed to them. Whilst it can appear to be a laborious, complex and daunting process, many solutions enable finance mangers to easily reclaim their owed VAT. It’s important to start with analysing where unrealised VAT recovery potential is, before seeking the ways to reclaim this. Without realising where money can be recouped, many companies fail to make reclaims and miss out on potentially substantial rebates. Concur’s goal is to make these processes even easier for employees to manage, by providing solutions that offer fast analysis and efficient recovery, allowing employees to focus their efforts on growing other areas of the business.

In addition, by January 2010, it will be a year since the European Commission announced that it will change the 2006 directive on VAT to allow businesses to increase the use of e-invoicing. This is another important factor that will make accountants’ jobs much easier. Instead of having tight restrictions on the storing of invoices, e-signatures and by treating both paper and electronic invoices the same, it will free up finance managers’ time and reduce the burdens currently placed upon them. When the European Commission made the announcement they predicted that a move would allow businesses to transfer to a 100 percent e-invoicing system and save up to 18 billion euros across the EU, welcome news no doubt to the ears of SMEs. What’s more, the changes to invoicing will give those the capability to capture both receipts and invoices whilst on the move, with the use of their smartphone, using solutions like Concur Mobile, freeing up even more of their time.

Both of these issues are really about ensuring the processes around managing VAT are made more efficient and straight forward and as we move in to 2010, it will be interesting to see how these important issues impact organisations across Europe.