What are the benefits of paperless audit systems?
- Accessibility
- Tracking ability
- Reduced waste
- Quick review
- Enhanced data security
- Improved file organization
- Saves money
For many companies, the auditing process takes up a lot of time and involves plenty of paperwork. Extensive effort goes into pouring over the stack of checklists, SOPs, audit documentation, business processing, and everything else needed for this complicated accounting task.
Fortunately, there is a more productive way to tackle this particular process, and that involves setting up a paperless audit system, which is a type of accounting system. Moving from paper-based systems to paperless ones eliminate plenty of inefficiencies in a company, and provide various other advantages. Here are the benefits of paperless audit systems.
Accessibility
Companies that use paperless audit systems provide easy accessibility — and one that can be used anytime, anywhere — for auditing teams. This is important as increasing accessibility to your financial documents and statements can decrease the amount of time needed for your teams to use said documents. Additionally, it reduces the amount of time that they need to provide relevant data and documents to external auditors.
Tracking ability
Another benefit of using paperless audit systems is that these allow users to use reporting and tracking abilities, which can be used throughout the entire auditing process.
Any authorized user can easily see each step of the review process, from start to finish. This benefit allows auditing teams to streamline resource requirements, while also improving the management of the auditing timeline.
These two benefits are very important, especially for public companies that need to meet certain regulations and mandated reporting deadlines.
Reduced waste
Using a paperless audit system allows you to significantly cut back on paper-based costs — such as reams of paper, printing ink, and so on. It also allows you to reduce the need for duplicate copies of financial documents and file storage facilities.
Cutting down on these costs provides your company with more cost savings than you can imagine. There is also the added benefit of becoming more environmentally friendly, which is important for companies who want to improve their “green” image.
Quick review
Paperless audits take less time to review than traditional audit methods. As mentioned earlier, there is greater accessibility, which helps streamline the document-sharing process. Financial documents are then easier to review and analyze.
Digitizing your financial documents also helps improve accuracy, as it minimizes human errors and the need to manually enter information into an auditing system.
Furthermore, when a document is flagged for additional review, auditors can easily send information or instructions for other teams to see, so that review and requests for additional data are easier.
As a result, paperless audit systems take less time and allow for a quicker review process — which shortens the total auditing timeline.
Enhanced data security
Paper documents are very difficult to secure, compared to digital documents. Paper documents can be copied, lost, or placed in an unsecured location. This is where another benefit of using paperless audit systems comes in.
On the other hand, digital documents can be stored in a secure online platform, as well as provide extra layers of security in the form of passwords and other user authentication measures.
Paperless audit systems can also provide an access log, which shows which users have reviewed each data element. This is very useful for security review purposes.
Improved file organization
If you have rows and rows of labeled and alphabetized file cabinets in your office, you might think that your file organization could not get any better. However, even if everyone in your office is neat and organized, paper files are still very easy to misplace — which can cause problems for your office later on.
Duplicated files are also another downside to physical file organization. With duplicate files, you might have handed a non-current version of a document for a client to sign, or presented the wrong document to your team.
A paperless audit system means that your files are always in the same place, no matter what. These files are also clearly marked so that you don’t accidentally submit or sign the wrong document.
Saves money
Saving money goes hand-in-hand with all the improvements to efficiency that a paperless audit system brings.
Going paperless offers even greater savings than reducing how much you spend on paper and ink each year. It also helps your team process a much larger volume of paperwork — and with less error — compared to paper-based processes in the same amount of time.
The savings on how much time your auditing team spends on one task becomes especially valuable, especially when it comes to repetitive, high-volume tasks like calculating and checking expenses.
With all these savings that a paperless audit system provides, you can create a much more pleasant experience for your team, while also realizing a better bottom line for your company.
Key Takeaway
Traditional, paper-based audit systems can make your audit process much more difficult and time-consuming than it needs to be. The benefits of paperless audit systems show that it simply is the more efficient way of handling this process.
With DynamIQ’s accounting system in the Philippines, you gain a paperless audit system that allows your team’s work to be easier, faster, and more accurate. Contact us today to learn more about how we can transform your audit process!
