By January 1, 2007, Clothier & Head will officially be a paperless office. The decision to “go paperless” was made for several reasons, the primary one being that, thanks to the complicated document management rules dictated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, electronic document management has now become the standard for most mid- to large sized accounting firms. While Clothier & Head is only minimally affected by Sarbanes-Oxley, going paperless still makes sense for a number of reasons.
Not only does a paperless office greatly reduce paper waste, but printing, copying and offsite storage costs also shrink. It also improves security and disaster recovery protection (ever think about what would happen to our paper files in case of a fire or major earthquake?)
Most importantly, however, once the initial learning curve is overcome, a paperless office is highly efficient. Think of it this way: if it takes you five minutes to request or search for a paper file, and you look for ten files a day, that ends up being more than 200 hours a year in wasted billing time. With a paperless system, files are always where they are supposed to be — and you can access them around the clock, even if someone else is using the file you need at the time or you’re away from the office.
All documents will live on Clothier & Head’s electronic network. The bulk of returns and financial statements will be completed “on screen,” meaning that things like tapes and red pencils will become mostly obsolete.
Another plus is that paper documents for 1040 organizers will be converted to electronic form through two high-speed scanners that not only scan documents but automatically file them in a pre-determined order. In a recent demonstration, a stack of nearly 100 documents was scanned and each document correctly organized within an electronic file — all within minutes.
