Setting up paperless records: how to do it? 4-step plan

Having paperless administration means you always have things in order, no matter where you are: at home, in the office or at a resort. Before the pandemic, this was already important as remote working was on the rise. But now that everyone in the world is forced to focus as much as possible on digital or paperless working, remote working has gained momentum. That includes digital processing of administrations. Wondering how to set up a good paperless administration? With our 4-step plan you will lay a solid foundation!

Booking invoices digitally: start paperless administration

Let’s look at the old-fashioned “paper situation. Suppose a supplier calls with an urgent question about the status of an invoice. To keep the business relationship good and appear professional, it’s important that you come up with an answer quickly. But one look at the large filing cabinet full of folders and your colleagues’ overflowing desks makes you panic. How can you find out the status of the invoice in question in this vast paper jungle? Usually, finding the invoice is a chore in itself. And if this is not the case because your administration is in order, it means that you spend an enormous amount of time every day organizing all that paperwork. Not an ideal situation. You can do things a lot more efficiently – and do so by setting up paperless administration. For example, you can process invoices digitally. You can also approve invoices with workflow software. What do you no longer have to do? Printing invoices, retyping them, passing them around for approval and filing them in the infamous cupboard. Searching is also a thing of the past: you can retrieve every invoice with the push of a button. Moreover, without all that printing, you are also being environmentally conscious, which of course benefits your CSR goals. Wondering how you can make a low-key switch to paperless accounting to automate your bookkeeping? Start by implementing the following 4 steps!

Step 1: Nurture your suppliers

Take a look at how your records currently look. Are you still getting invoices in the mail? If so, you can’t set up a paperless office. You need to receive invoices digitally. So first, make sure suppliers always submit invoices digitally. Also ask them to do so in the correct format: pdf, XML or UBL. After all, if invoices are delivered in a different format, they are not legally valid. Finally, tell suppliers that invoices must always contain the correct data. Do you still receive an incomplete invoice? Send it back to them, asking them to fill in the missing information. In this way, you educate your suppliers and are one step closer to paperless administration.

Step 2: Keep it digital

Get rid of the need to print out invoices. Once you have successfully completed step 1, you will receive invoices in the correct format. This means you can put them directly into your financial system, such as by copying and pasting the texts. If you find that a time-consuming task, choose good scanning and recognition software that automatically recognizes invoice data and prepares it for your ERP system. If you really want to make things easy for yourself, it is advisable to choose smart, self-learning OCR software. Then you don’t have to retype data or work with templates. You get a monitoring task, leaving you time for fun activities that add more value to the organization.

Step 3: Choose a good digital workflow

If you really want to move to paperless administration, you can no longer pass invoices from desk to desk. So you will have to send documents around digitally for approval. You can basically do this by e-mail, but that’s a lot of hassle. So check to see if your financial system has a workflow. This allows you to pass the invoice in a structured manner to all approvers. With a good workflow, the approval process is streamlined and you always know where a document is. Doesn’t your ERP system have a workflow? Then see if a scan and recognize party can provide a workflow solution that links seamlessly with your ERP package.

Step 4: Put your filing cabinet in the trash!

If you use a scan and recognize solution for processing purchase invoices that interfaces with your ERP system, you benefit from a digital archive. Need to reference an invoice for an audit? Want to see what notes you made on an invoice because a supplier approached you with a question? You can find everything in the digital archive in no time. You can see exactly which route a document has taken and what has happened to it. Your digital archive is not only easily searchable, but also incredibly complete. In short, if you have set up paperless administration, you can finally put your filing cabinet in the trash!

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