Paperless office question

Paperless office question

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I have been following the various paperless office / document management system threads with interest. We are currently trying to implement Logical Office in our small ( three person practice - Ireland). I note the various opinions ranging from use Windows folders to using sytems like Logical Office/Rapport/Lucion Filecenter etc

What started out for us as a project to record all interactions with clients in a central location ( for efficiency of response)  is gradually creeping into something much bigger. My question is what files are you including within your "paperless/less paper office" system.

It seems to me there are three broad categories of item.

1. Incoming/Outgoing correspondence ( including emails) including demands/tax assessments / copies of final accounts etc - what would probably normally have been filed on a paper correspondence file . Relatively simple to incorporate these.

2. Working paper type files / backup like Excel Sheets/Word query sheets/( also incl emails). More difficult to include in paperless as they tend to be less structured ( and the number of files depends on the size of the client).

3. Paper documentation like P60's / claims documentation etc or even copy VAT returns / P35 forms etc - Also more difficult to incorporate as there could be a lot of these and scanning would be time consuming!!

My initial feeling is to deal with No. 1 type items only for now i.e convert what would have been on the paper correspondence file to electronically maintained. No 2 type items would continue to be kept in Windows folders organised on a client/year etc subfolder system. No 3 type items probably continue for now keeping in paper form. The logic behind this is to "walk before we run" and take things in smaller steps rathet than disrupting everything with a "big bang " approach - on the other hand are we missing out on the benefits ?

Which types of items do you included in your paperless systems ? All comments observations welcomed.

Permon

Replies (11)

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By petersaxton
23rd Mar 2011 00:30

Should be easy

"1. Incoming/Outgoing correspondence ( including emails) including demands/tax assessments / copies of final accounts etc - what would probably normally have been filed on a paper correspondence file . Relatively simple to incorporate these."

Agreed

"2. Working paper type files / backup like Excel Sheets/Word query sheets/( also incl emails). More difficult to include in paperless as they tend to be less structured ( and the number of files depends on the size of the client)."

They are already paperless. I tend to keep current emails in Outlook but once they are a year or two old I will delete them from Outlook and save them as individual emails in Outlook folders. This will speed up the operation of Outlook.

"3. Paper documentation like P60's / claims documentation etc or even copy VAT returns / P35 forms etc - Also more difficult to incorporate as there could be a lot of these and scanning would be time consuming!!"

If you have a flat bed scanner it could take a lot of time but if you have a sheet fed scanner it won't take long.

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By Steve Holloway
23rd Mar 2011 08:32

Lucion system

 is just a nice and (very effective) front end for windows explorer so your files be thay pdf, excel, word, email are all held together in the filing system in their native format.

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By zebaa
23rd Mar 2011 12:03

KIS

I use a small paperless system, but based on directory structure. As it happens I use Name, then Tax Year as sub-directory, then communication in (letter & email), communication out, payroll, working papers etc etc as further sub-directories. In your case item 1 seems to give you no problem. It also seems to me that items 2 & 3 are formulated on computer. If so, simply change where you 'save' whatever you are working on. If you are producing P60's (for example) print out only what you need to give to the employee. As there are 3 of you there must be strict rules - which you ALL understand. Lastly, buy a ScanSnap scanner. It can scan multiple sheets, it's fast and the bundled (windows) software is good. As an aside I use linux, which is less good, but it has proved to be super device.

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
23rd Mar 2011 12:28

Some general hints

We are similar size to you and started the process about 5-6 years ago.  The final shove for us now is returning all unsolicited paper mail to the senders requesting they stop sending (or only send by email) and asking all suppliers to invoice us electronically.

Looking back, the one aspect of all this that was not obvious at the start was that the vast majority of what we store is stagnant history. This will soon include, for example, all the PDF's, Excel spreadsheets, word docs, scans and emails saved in or, in the case of emails, tagged to "2010", ie all the work we did on March 2010 accounts or 2010 tax returns.  So be wary of any sophisticated systems to hold and monitor this stuff as it's not necessary also don't be drawn in to scanning in old paperwork, just let it sit in stoorage and die the death after 6-7 years.

Your point about one place for everything is a great idea and is high on the agenda of ACCA monitoring visits when they visit paperless offices.  In reality though it's extremely difficult to achieve without, as I say, paying for a sophisticated system, that requires time to link or latch onto outside generated docs which will just sit there doing nothing.

In our case therefore, with all but 2 clients online, our key source of client interaction is email and so we invested in an email tagging system called Mailsafe which, from within Outlook, enables us to tag and save separately every email in & out (though usually the latter) with client ref/topic/year etc.

Again, as most client are online, practically everything we produce starts life electronically and so we just leave it in the appropriate folder, similarly 98% of docs we receive, come in as attachments and so, as well as being tagged in the email, we'll also save these to the same folders.

As far as scanning is concerned we only scan in things that we may later need to refer to so if we receive a paper notification of a CT return having been received or anything else that just acts as a tick box to something that has already been noted or ticked off in IRIS it goes straight to recycling, there's no point in scanning for the sake of it.

We haven't touched an analysis pad for years, Excel has far more than 8 columns.  Also we use Excel for notes & queries which can be sorted and protected to send to clients for them to add their answers/comments and return, with the added benefit that, with no limit to the width, you can have a series of back ond forth spreading the extra comments and answers across the sheet.

99% of tax returns and accounts never see a printer, at either end, and, if needed, we get clients to print, sign and scan back just the signature pages although this is beginning to become unnecessary.

The downside is the increase in GBs on our server and as we are just about to get everying hosted on the web, I'm looking at archiving to hard media, deleting or compressing files. 

We now also look at the size of every attachment we receive (the 20MB 2 page scan is not unusual) and (usually via PDF) convert anything over 1MB to something far smaller and return it to the sender with a polite note about scanner & PDF generator settings.  If only I'd realised this 5 years ago we could have saved a lot of e-storage.

Hope that helps

 

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By petersaxton
23rd Mar 2011 13:40

Email

"99% of tax returns and accounts never see a printer, at either end, and, if needed, we get clients to print, sign and scan back just the signature pages although this is beginning to become unnecessary."

They only need to email back giving permission to file online.

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
23rd Mar 2011 14:23

Peter

Yes, I know but because the ACCA insist on us submitting an accountant's report with Abbreviated accounts and you can't do this via online filing we need a signed set.  This has been made easier however by the ability to create a printed signature and will be even better when they exempt micro companies from filing @ Companies House all together.

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By Steve Holloway
23rd Mar 2011 14:33

scanning in old paperwork, just let it sit in stoorage and die

 Top tip ... I had reached that conclusion quite quickly as its amazing how quickly the time passes in this game. I'll just wait 7 years and order a bulk shredder for the weekend and get rid of the filing cabinets in one go! Have to say one week in and the novelty of shredding stuff 60 seconds after opening the post is still strong! Also, having no email in my in or sent box makes me feel good too.

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By PERMON
23rd Mar 2011 22:04

Paperless office question

Thanks to all for the replies and suggestions - lots of food for thought

@Paul

Thanks for the detailed and considered reply. You make some good points:

Re stagnant history point - subject of course to statutory retention periods . But maybe it is indeed a risk of paperless systems that we are tempted to save something "just because we can". In a paper file there is more of an effort in printing etc so we are less inclined to print and file "willy nilly".  For us Logical Office autofiles emails to the Logical Office client history record but I am torn between the ease of having it all done automatically and the downside that filing all emails to/from that contact / company ( regardless of how important or otherwise they are) can result in the history getting a little "bunged up". Maybe a good overall criterion is - "would I put this on the paper file - if not why retain the electronic version either ?"

Re one central filing store - this is definitely what I was aiming for but maybe it is indeed too difficult to achieve and we have to be satisfied even with electronic filing for the files to be in more than one location eg Outlook/Logical office ( or Mailsafe - thanks I am looking into that) and / or client folders on the network.

One good thing - regardless of where this project ends up for us the process of going through it is clarifying lots of matters in my mind - definitely a learning process.

Incidentally - I am surprised that you have been able to get virtually all of your clients to electronic communication. Although we do of course have clients using packages like SAGE/TAS email etc  our experience is that many self-employed traders at the smaller end of the scale have yet to embrace information technology.

Permon

 

 

 

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
24th Mar 2011 09:39

Permon

Hi - You're absolutely right about the "Would I file that Paper" question, similarly I also ask, "if the info on that email or piece of paper had arrived via a phone call, would I have made a file note?"

So even though Mailsafe's "compliance" side does capture, compress and store every email in & out without tagging (for security purposes) we chose to tag only the emails that are worth keeping and this tends only to happen when we send or reply.  As it happens, as we move over to hosting, the compliance security store will be dropped.

Mailsafe too can "auto-tag" to a client by recognising the email address but as well as then tagging everything there are two problems with that for us in that we have separate company and personal clients and it can't differentiate also, of course, it only appends the client tag and can't tell whether it's to do with Accounts, IHT, PAYE, 2010 or 2011.  So we only use it in limited cases (eg from staff of clients).  One great facility though is being able to tag one email a number of times, ie we may discuss the accounts, PAYE and our bill in one email.

You mention about the process itself being of benefit, how true is that.  I came to the process purely from the environmental angle but changing methods & assessing how & what we do things along the way has paid divis in time & money saving.  This is now the main selling point of "greening" a business in general, eg going through the relatively easy process of measuring & reporting your Green House Gas emissions opens the business processes to effeciency & cost savings.

The process of bringing clients online has been gradual, with carrot & stick, emailing back when they wrote etc and there are several where we email husbands/wives & even children.  As when we dropped binding accounts 10 years ago, once we had a critical mass of clients who were OK with regular email we told all online clients that, unless they objected, all future correspondence, accounts & tax returns would be in PDF format, don't think any objected.

I also found that going though the 5 yearly process of deciding which clients would be better off bothering someone else, identified many who had not taken advantage of computers.  So we are actually now down to just one very long-standing self employed elderly client who doesn't need or want to get IT'd, but then I enjoy the excuse of meeting up for a chat and some lunch.

Given how it now dominates my life I can see the time when I might join her club!

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By ShaunSpalding
05th May 2011 16:32

Paperless office and VAT inspections

 Hi All

We are only just started on our paperless journey. Part of what we do is operate a bookkeeping bureau. All incoming client supplier invoices are received in scanned format that is then attached to the accounting entry within our software. In this way one can review say a purchase day book list and double-click to recall the invoice scan.

We have just received notification of a VAT inspection on one of our clients. The notification letter says:

"If any of the records are held on a computer, please make sure that there is someone available to access them during the visit. We are not allowed to operate customers' or advisors' computers".

 Is this correct in that we really have to tie someone up the whole morning to babysit the VAT inspector the whole time she is here? Obviously the original plan was just to sit them down at a terminal and off they go.

 Can any paperless veterans help with how you deal with VAT inspections?

 Many thanks in advance

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By mentla
26th Sep 2011 17:49

Anything still need to be kept the old way?

 

Only just starting to look into going paperless, and the only obstacle I can foresee is: does anything remain that must be kept in paper form rather than electronic?

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