CPA Practice Advisor

MAY 2013

Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.

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FROM THE TRENCHES By Randy Johnston Improving Document Management: What Your Firm Can Do W hen people ask what I enjoy doing, I usually mention three technologies: 1) infrastructure including networking and cloud, 2)accounting sofware, and 3) document management. Because I have been drawn into so many CPA firms and industry businesses for consulting and document management projects, I'm fortunate to bring some real world implementation advice to you. At the risk of insulting your frm, it is rare to see a document management project implemented correctly. Further, I don't believe a document management project is ever complete. Let me explain why. Paperless systems, or the more formal name of document management, brings business management capabilities to your frm. Document management sofware continues to get more sophisticated while geting easier to use. Te capabilities of the modern systems and the way frms have creatively implemented document management leads me to call the current properly done implementations "Paperless 3.0". Unfor tunately many of your implementations are "Paperless 0.5" Mr. Johnston is executive vice president and partner of K2 Enterprises and Network Management Group, Inc. He is a nationally recognized educator, consultant and writer with over 30 years' experience. He can be contacted at randy.johnston@cpapracticeadvisor.com. 20 May 2013 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com because you didn't really get your system implemented correctly initially. You may have even taken a step backwards from using your paper based system. One key goal of paperless is to increase efciency, and as a result, drive down costs. The Capabilities of Document Management Systems Professionals in document management, or the more sophisticated Enterprise Content Management, have a number of goals to achieve or capabilities they can choose to deploy. Ref lect on your need for paperless documents, and see which of the following capabilities might help your frm and you. • AUTOMATIC DOCUMENT NAMING – the ability for the system to recognize the source and type of document, and make an attempt to name the document according to frm standards. Many systems will have automatic folder creation capabilities if the system is folder oriented. • RECORDS RETENTION AND DISPOSAL – the ability to set frm policies for documents establishing retention periods when a document is created. Systems should make an allowance for litigation hold, and review before fnal disposal along with destruction of any backup or archive versions of the documents. • PORTALS – the ability to publish one or more documents through a web site to allow secure client access. Making documents available in a portal should require minimal efort and be a natural part of the document creation process. • WORKFLOW – the ability to move work through a series of pre-defned steps. Workfow systems organize and control procedures, and can inform management of the status of work in progress. Workfows can support assignment of work to team

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