Accountants are going digital faster than ever.
By Rick Telberg
For HP
The paperless accounting firm or department may be the best idea since, well, paper. It’s quick. It’s efficient. It’s reliable. It’s probably where you want to be?there or back in the 20th century.
But getting there isn’t always so easy. You can stumble. You can get lost. You can end up creating more work and confusion than your office has ever seen. You can lose clients. You can even lose employees who would rather walk out than deal with a bungled conversion.
New research from InfoTech Partners North America and the Association for Accounting Administration found an accelerating trend toward, pardon the phrase, “paperless-ism” in accounting offices.
Comparing various aspects of paperless communication and information storage in 2003 and 2005, the survey typically found 50 to 80 percent of responding firms adopting new paperless practices.
The survey found a 27 percent increase in the use of on-screen review for tax production. Three-quarters of responding firms store client returns in digital format, and almost as many use their intranet to store and share in-house information.
Physical document destruction soared to 92 percent, yet only 27 percent of firms reported having procedures for e-doc destruction.
Other big gains came in the storage of all audit work papers in paperless audit applications, the scanning of client-supplied information for tax return support, and firm-wide sharing of everyone’s daily calendars.
Firms seemed less eager to adopt digital fax systems. Only a third were using digital faxes, though that represented a 24 percent increase. A hefty 83 percent had standardized file names and directories, but that was a decline of 1 percent.
The varied results indicate a few things about the migration to paperless operations:
1. The movement is definitely surging, and
2. Firms are moving step-by-step, planning methodically, and being careful as they go.
Accountants are in an especially good position for making the shift. First of all, they have the necessity. They shift and manipulate a lot of information, and they store it for a long time. They also have the means of invention. They are careful and analytical – two qualities essential to successfully overhauling the core of the accounting office.
That core is composed of information and communication – data and its movement. The firm that fails to move data efficiently will not survive for long, not if other firms are doing it better.
The technology issues may be the easiest part of making the leap. The process demands detailed strategic planning, a change in management style, and the training of personnel.
It may take years. But most accountants are already getting started.