Paperless Office Benefits for Accounting Departments

Working with accounting departments in the media and staffing industries gives us practical insight into the day-to-day benefits of switching to the paperless office. As a starting point, we’ve compiled this top 5 list of things customers want to know about the benefits of the paperless office.

5 things accounting departments should know about the paperless office:

1. What is the paperless office? A paperless office is one where the use of paper is greatly reduced or eliminated. Documents are converted to digital form by scanning or saving as a digital document.
2. Going paperless saves money by reducing paper expenditures, equipment costs for printing and copying all that paper, office space needed for filing and storage, and time wasted trying to locate paper documents that are misfiled or lost. The average office worker uses about 10,000 sheets of paper per year. Office workers generate approximately two pounds of paper every day.
3. Paperless office provides more efficient workflows. Accounts Payable (AP) is one area where great improvements in productivity are made when the paperless office is used. On average, 60% of invoices still arrive as paper and most business-to-business payments are made by paper check. Automating workflows streamlines the process for getting invoices (and other documents) into the system. It also creates consistent approval routing and automates exception handling routines.
4. Accessing financial data takes just a few clicks with the paperless office. Digital documents can be indexed and searched making data easy to locate. Comments and supporting documentation can be attached to provide detailed explanations as needed.
5. Documents are secure in the paperless office. Electronic documents can be stored on the local network or hosted in a secure data center. Access privileges are set by the system administrator based on the user's role. Users have access only to the information they need to complete their tasks.