Digitizing your financial records: get off to a good start with this guide!

You want to take a hard look at your administrative processes. You currently spend a lot of time on boring, repetitive, manual tasks. And you know that nowadays this can be done differently – namely, by switching to digital administration. But how should you digitize your financial administration? And how exactly do you benefit from this? In this manual we explain it to you!

From paper records to digital accounting: what are the benefits?

1. You maintain an overview

When you perform various manual administrative operations, incoming documents easily get lost.Papers pile up on desks, and the number of separate folders in physical file cabinets grows rapidly. It’s often just a matter of time before you lose track. If you start digitizing your administration, you collect purchase invoices and other incoming documents in one central location. There you can always find them in no time. Moreover, you always have up-to-date insight into the status of an invoice.

2. Full file cabinets are a thing of the past

In financial accounting, you must keep all incoming documents, such as invoices and receipts, for a certain period of time. (See also our blog posts “Can you keep invoices digitally?” and “Recordkeeping Period“, a mini-guide for keeping your accounts digitally). Is your accountant coming by to conduct an audit? Does the Tax Office have questions about your archived records? Then you need to look up various invoices and other documents received from past years. If you work with a digital archive, you only need to press one button. How convenient!

3. You work a lot more efficiently and faster

If you process incoming documents in the traditional way, you lose a lot of time. Before an invoice is booked, approved, paid and archived, you are many manual steps ahead. With the right software, you can automate these tasks, saving a lot of hours. So by digitizing your financial administration, you create more space for fun, challenging tasks.

4. The error rate goes down

If you’re always retyping billing information, a typo is in a small corner. How do you prevent such human errors? By digitizing your bookkeeping. Smart scan and recognition software automatically fills in invoice data for you and prepares a proposal entry. All you have to do is check it.

How to set up solid digital records in 6 steps?

Step 1: Lay the foundation with a reliable ERP system

Before digitizing your accounting, it’s wise to identify where your pain points are. What are your minimum requirements for digitizing accounting? If you know this, you can make an ERP program work for you (instead of the other way around). Look at where paper and digital documents currently come in and who approves them. Take a close look at your internal administrative processes. That way, you can determine which ERP package will really help your organization move forward.

Step 2: Process incoming documents with smart scanning and recognition software

Smart OCR software takes an incoming document, such as a purchase invoice, “in hand” for you. The system recognizes elements such as invoice date, invoice number, VAT amount and creditor and converts them into a reliable booking proposal. It also actively detects errors on invoices. Moreover, a smart OCR solution is self-learning: it gets smarter over time. The recognition rate is very high to begin with, but if the software does not immediately recognize the correct value, you can point it out on the digital document. The system makes a correction and remembers it. This makes the processing of digital invoices faster and more efficient.

Step 3: Use workflow software to efficiently approve digital invoices

Digital records are only truly complete if you use workflow software in addition to an OCR solution. This allows you to automatically pass invoices past approvers. It is smart to determine in advance who these will be so that you can streamline the approval process. When it is completely digital, you then have virtually nothing to worry about. In fact, with a good workflow system, you can also send reminders automatically. And if you work with an advanced solution, it is also possible to automate monthly recurring invoices that fall within a certain margin. This way, the processing process runs optimally!

Step 4: Create a good internal process for incoming document processing

Every day you receive documents of all shapes and sizes. However, an hr form goes through a completely different processing process than a purchase invoice. It is important that all colleagues who process a particular document are involved in creating the digital version of this process. If you skip someone, friction can arise. After all, end users themselves know best what they need. Also include your suppliers in the switch to digital administration: let them know in which format you would like to receive invoices and which data must not be missing from the document.

Step 5: Make the switch to a digital archive

According to laws and regulations, you must keep digital documents for a certain period of time. Make sure you have an ERP program with an archive function, so that you do not have to buy separate software for this. This gives you, as it were, a large digital filing cabinet in which you can easily find everything. Fast, easy and paperless (in other words, good for the environment!).

Step 6: Get the entire organization to embrace the new way of working

Digitizing your accounting system means employees have to embrace a whole new way of working. A big step that sometimes creates resistance when going live with an automation solution. You want to avoid such a situation. That’s why it’s crucial that you include employees in every step of the digitization process. That way, they understand why they are using the new solution and carry the change.

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