[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]When I ask business owners what the most painful part of their accounting is, a good majority of you undeniably say it has to do with the pile of paper that comes along with it as your accounting is often messy, disorganized and inefficient.
Having paper all over the place leads to inefficiencies since you need to organize it, file it, locate it, and pass it off to whoever may need access. By gaining control over the paper in your accounting, you will be able to realize efficiency gains which result in time saved and increased focus on the tasks that bring value to your business.
Here’s how you do it – use cloud accounting to digitize receipts, bills, invoices, etc. and store all digital records in one central hub. Let’s go over the benefits of this approach and how you can implement it in your business.
The benefits
Save time
Time-consuming administrative tasks such as keeping hard copy of receipt and putting it in a shoebox or filing it in a folder can be eliminated. Cloud accounting allows you to easily collect and organize financial documents in one secure hub, giving you more time to work on the business (as opposed to in it).
Eliminate paper
The cloud eliminates the need for paper-based processes, allowing you to free up office space, better track documents, and become more environmentally friendly. All documents are centralized, searchable, and available at your fingertips in one digital filing cabinet. Minimize office storage space and cut down costs associated with paper!
Increase flexibility
The ability to access financial information anytime, anywhere means that you can work where you want, when you want. This is a great fit if your business has gone mobile, and complements your office-on-the-go operations.
Enhanced audit-proofing
The CRA requires you to keep tax records 6 years after filing the company’s tax return. Keeping records for such a long period of time can be difficult because the documents might be lost, or the ink might fade over time. And since these invoices, receipts, bills could be just about anywhere, tracking them down is usually a nightmare. Fortunately, the technology allows source documents to easily be attached to business transactions in the cloud accounting system, which provide enhanced audit-proofing for the business. You can easily find documents by doing a quickly search and find matching keywords or phrases.
Collaborate efficiently
You can now collaborate with your accountant or business advisor online since it runs entirely on the cloud, making it an ideal choice for the modern-day business. There is less time spent chasing after documents, and more time can be spent on providing insights that will help your business succeed.
The implementation
Paper receipts
Download an app on your smartphone and take a photo of the receipt. Digital records are acceptable as long as it is an accurate reproduction, it gives the same information as the paper document, and the significant details of the image are not obscured.
Recurring bills and bank statements
Pull historical bills and statements by connecting the technology with your bank and your vendor. Once the connections are established, future bills and statements will be downloaded when they become available.
Online invoices
For online invoices without a hard copy, you can simply forward them to a designated email address so that all records are stored in the same location. Better yet, ask your vendor who you do business with on a regular basis to send the invoices directly to the designated email address.
Documents on the computer
Documents that are saved on the computer can easily be uploaded to the cloud central hub by using the drag-and-drop function. You may need to do this when you first transition to cloud accounting. Best practice is to avoid saving documents on the desktop and work directly in the cloud.
Countless paper documents
Depending on the nature of your business, sometimes you may still receive a lot of paper documents and hard copy invoices. Use a scanner that integrates with your cloud accounting system to upload the documents in the same central hub where you can manage all documents in one place.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]