Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/571003
6 September 2015 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com FROM THE TRENCHES By Randy Johnston Paperless Choices for the Firm and Your Clients DMS systems have some critical features including: Check in/out, Versioning, Editing, Record Reten- tion, Hierarchical storage, support for storing various formats of fles including PDF, TIF, XPS, as well as Nat i ve Do c u me nt s , a n not at ion suppor t includ ing sta mps, sig na- t u re s , re d a c t ion a nd t ic m a r k s , security through Single and Multi- factor authentication, encr y ption, email Integration, work fow/CR M/ Practice Management Integration, S e c u r e P o r t a l / L o c a l , S e c u r e P o r t a l / We b , P o r t a b i l i t y o n a L aptop, OCR , Sea rch v s. Folder Browse, sharing and collaboration plus many more features that are the keys to what makes a DMS help us be more productive. Products in paperless run from the very simple, which I refer to as Tier 5 or File Cabinets, to the very complex, which I refer to as Tier 1 or Enterprise Content Management (ECM), just like accounting sof t- ware products. Usually at Tier 4 we see OCR added, at Tier 3 we see version i ng a nd check i n/out fea- t u r e s , a n d w o r k f l o w b e g i n s appearing in Tier 3 and 2. Simpler p r o d u c t s s o m e t i m e s a d d m o r e ad v a nc ed feat u re s a nd comple x produc ts a re somet i mes m issi ng feat u res i ncluded i n a lower end ofering. G e ne r a l l y, you wou ld e x p e c t easier integration and success by pu rc h a si ng you r DM S f rom t he same vendor that makes your other prac t ice produc t s . For e x a mple, b ot h CC H a nd T hom s on of f e r paperless systems that integrate into their overall suite. CCH Document a nd G oFi leR oom a re ver y sol id produc ts w it h good feat u re sets. C o m p e t i t o r s h a v e t o l o o k f o r something to ofer to make them- selves unique. For example, eFile- Cabinet has a cloud backup service 6 S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5 • w w w . C P A P r a c Randy 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 . T h i s y e a r w e' v e h a d t h e pleasure of recommending s o f t w a r e p r o g r a m s f o r a c c o u n t i n g , p ay r o l l a n d other critical areas of your practice. Now is the time to consider your paperless or Document Manage- ment Solution (DMS) needs. You'll fnd that our advice is similar to selecting an appropriate accounting software for your frm and clients. If you are a smaller organization, you might be able to survive with a Do It Yourself (DIY) approach to document management if careful naming of folders and fles are routinely applied, just like you can run a business on a spreadsheet. With DIY, it is almost impossible to guarantee file naming, file location or file destruction, wasting time and increasing liability. HAVING THE RIGHT TOOLS AND PROCESSES ENABLE YOUR FIRM TO HAVE A BETTER CLIENT DELIVERABLE WHERE YOU CAN CHARGE A PREMIUM FOR YOUR SERVICE AND EXPERTISE.