Paperless Accounting and Paperless HR Explored: The Future is Digital

Traditional paper documents and filing systems have been used to organize businesses’ employee and accounting information for decades. But they are quickly being replaced as technology evolves. Business financial accounting has been revolutionized by paperless accounting and paperless HR systems. These systems use cloud-based technologies to simplify and centralize the storage of essential information.

More businesses than ever before are realizing that paper-based HR and accounting management is an inefficient, costly, and cumbersome way to manage information. Many have turned to automated accounting systems to meet their needs in a more effective way. However, it should be noted that going paperless isn’t an overnight process. It takes effort and time, not to mention meaningful involvement from accounting teams and HR coordinators.

If you’re willing to put in the effort required to make the switch and revolutionize your business processes, here’s what you need to know about going paperless.

The Benefits of Going Paperless

Paperless accounting and HR can benefit your business in a number of ways.

Firstly, it can free up your HR and accounting teams from the tedious tasks of filling out forms, filing paper documents, and updating spreadsheets. These tasks are handled automatically, leaving your talent with more time to focus on driving the long-term success of your business. It may also reduce staffing costs, as you’ll need to hire fewer temporary workers to assist your permanent team during busy times.

Your financial and human resources processes will be significantly less likely to suffer from errors if you have an automated accounting system in place. These systems store documents and crucial information digitally on the cloud. This makes for an excellent organization and provides instant access to anyone who needs them at any time.

Paperless technologies help to address and resolve many of the pain points associated with traditional HR and accounting practices. Including high operational costs, lack of visibility, avoidable delays, data silos, human error and inaccuracy, high employee turnover, and general inefficiency. These systems streamline your business functions by modernizing your processes using powerful automation technology.

As well as benefiting your accounting HR team, going paperless benefits company executives and members of the boardroom. Board papers are some of the company’s most sensitive documents, and losing them can have serious consequences. Going for paperless board meetings using an online board portal boosts security and makes documents easier to store and distribute.

Company executives can effectively operate through a paperless boardroom and now access board documents on the go, catering for both pre-meeting and post-meeting activities.

How an Automated Accounting System Can Help

If you’re looking for accounting tips for your business, one of the best we can suggest is to adopt an automated accounting system. Paperless accounting services streamline your small business accounting processes. Something that’s crucial for your ongoing success.

Businesses aiming for financial growth need to get their accounting right while minimizing errors. Even a single mistake could seriously affect your company’s financial statements. Leaving your team working overtime to recalculate your books.

Automated accounting can minimize and resolve these issues by:

1. Facilitating Faster Customer Payments

The right paperless accounting system will include features that enable your business to get paid quicker. Even when it comes to receivable customer payments. Using a manual system means having to send out regular payment reminders to every single customer and associate that has a payable account with you, one at a time.

An automated system accepts a much wider range of payments. Plus, it allows you to effortlessly schedule bulk payment reminders. Receiving faster customer payouts can streamline your financial statements. And it helps you to keep your books in order without constantly having to revise set payment schedules and dates.

2. Ensuring More Time Efficiency

Automated accounting systems can save your business time by automating tasks and cutting out manual labor to a large degree. Even small businesses need accountants on board to handle their financial records.

The right system will simplify your accounting team’s responsibilities. It will also free them from manual computations, leaving them with more time to meet deadlines, produce quality work, and maintain an optimal level of productivity.

3. Encouraging More Accurate Accounting Practices

Your accountant is likely handling massive volumes of financial information. Both for your business and perhaps for other clients. So, it’s no surprise that small mistakes may happen from time to time. Unfortunately, even the smallest of errors made in the accounting department can throw off the accuracy of your financial statements. This puts your business at risk.

Paperless accounting fills these gaps. It helps to ensure that all financial statements and accounts are accurate. Quality software will be able to assist your accountant when it comes to computing sales orders, expenses, credit memos, accounts payable and receivable, sales tax, purchase orders, and payroll deductions.

4. Organizing Key Financial Information

Yet another benefit of adopting an automated accounting system is the proper organization and storage of financial information. Even small businesses have hefty volumes of financial data, especially when they make transactions on a daily basis. If this information is not properly organized, it makes the generation of financial statements tricky at best. Outdated methods also leave important data at risk of theft and breach due to easy access for criminals.

Paperless accounting systems allow your accounting team to instantly search past financial data to find specific documents and pieces of information that would have taken them hours to locate manually.

5. Ensuring Higher Productivity

Last but certainly not least, paperless accounting adds more productivity to your finance teams. It enables your accountants to produce multiple financial statements and records at the same time that it would have taken them to do one manually. This gives accountants more time to assist your clients and provide in-depth assistance and explanations whenever you need them.

The right system will boost your business’s profitability by freeing up your employees to focus on other tasks. And it allows your business to optimize its budget and resources and better distribute key roles. It will increase the likelihood of your business being able to reach its optimal growth potential if used correctly.

How Automated Paperless HR Benefits Businesses

Adopting paperless HR also has numerous benefits for businesses of all sizes. As well as being environmentally friendly, paperless HR offers the following key benefits:

• Reduced HR and paper administration costs, as your team, won’t need to print or store any hard copy files. This reduces both the cost of the storage space needed to store hard copies and the costs of purchasing and maintaining the equipment needed to print them, such as printers, copiers, scanners, and binding machines.
• Increased productivity and efficiency for your HR team, who can use digital administration to manage HR processes with ease without spending hours on a single process that could easily be automated.
• The superior organization thanks to eliminating bulky paper files and storing data on the cloud.
• Improved compliance, as digital administration enables your team to rapidly implement organizational changes across the board and update multiple files simultaneously.
• Instant access anytime and anywhere. This makes it easy for remote workers to access the HR files and data they need without having to travel to your physical offices to do so.
• Integration with other key human resources platforms, which streamlines processes even further.
• Simplified digital payroll that is more accurate and compliant with local tax and employment regulations.
• Easy data backups, as digital files can be backed up onto external hard drives or additional systems for data protection in case the originals are damaged, lost or stolen.
• Better data security. Hard copy files can easily be accessed by unauthorized third parties, and are vulnerable to damage. Paperless HR systems can be protected with two-step authentication methods and encryption to prevent data breaches and the loss of crucial information.
• Faster onboarding of new hires, as instead of saddling new hires with heaps of paperwork that needs to be signed, your HR team can have them complete their documentation online at their own pace. This information will be easier to locate when it is needed.

When implementing paperless HR systems, experts recommend that you rethink your business’s processes in order to optimize efficiency. This can involve using more basic forms that reduce the amount of time needed for administrators to fill them in. Or customizing your HR applications to create processes in which some steps are completed automatically and sent off to HR managers for approval digitally.

Paperless Accounting and HR in a Nutshell

Paperless accounting and paperless HR systems make business accounting and administration easier, more time-efficient, more cost-effective, and secure. They can save your organization money and improve your employees’ satisfaction, as well as furthering your business’s overall growth goals.

The key to implementing paperless systems, especially ones for paperless meetings smoothly is to ensure that every member of your company is familiar with whichever versions of digital systems you choose to use. You may need to provide training to ensure that they can use these platforms efficiently. But the upfront effort and investments will be well worth your time.

Becoming a Paperless Organization

From what we see, becoming an organization that implements paperless systems can help transform it to become better and more efficient.

Getting your whole team on board with as many paper-free processes as possible will help to ensure that your business remains organized, efficient and productive. Even during its busiest times.