How to Digitize a Company's Accounting Documents?
The ideal end product of comprehensive company digitization is a paperless document workflow. However, there are various paths to achieve this, and the workflow itself can differ – ranging from simply transferring paper sheets to the computer by essentially photographing them, to creating machine-readable and analyzable documents.
It is important to keep in mind that there is no right or wrong way to digitize. It depends on what the company's management decides to implement. The decision can be influenced by many factors, including available human resources, anticipated costs, and the intended use of the digitized documents. For some small businesses, scanned contracts and electronically prepared invoices might be completely sufficient, as storing them in the cloud is more convenient and secure than keeping them in folders somewhere in the office corner or at the owner's home. On the other hand, another company might urgently need the ability to search for information daily in a rapidly growing pile of documents, requiring a completely different approach.
Understandable for Both Humans and Machines
It should be noted that digitization is not just about converting paper documents into electronic ones; it is a process where the company commits to transitioning to so-called "paperless accounting." This means that the company will avoid issuing any documents in paper format in the future. At the same time, it must be remembered that the company must comply with the requirements of the Accounting Law, which states that if accounting is maintained electronically using accounting software or an accounting information computer system, the accounting documents must be displayed on a computer or other electronic device screen in a human-readable format and allow for the creation of paper-based derivatives of these documents, i.e., printing them. A human-readable format is an electronic data representation that a physical person can use as information without any additional processing. Thus, it must be as readable and understandable as in the paper era.
There are various ways to achieve this result: by simply scanning, photographing, or using specialized software. In accounting, digitization involves several stages: one – converting paper documents into electronic format, and two – processing electronic documents.
If paper documents are converted into electronic format in various ways, such as being photographed or scanned, an agreement on the electronic format of the document must be reached. This could be PDF or one of the image formats, such as JPG or PNG. Different formats can also be used, but it is first necessary to understand how the document will be processed in accounting and whether the necessary annotations can be made on it. It may be necessary to purchase specialized software to perform the required actions.
From Image to Processable Document
If data from a document needs to be entered into an accounting system, it is important to understand in advance how this will happen. Not all programs can read data from a PDF format, let alone automatically copy it. Therefore, what seems like an insignificant question can lead to someone having to manually re-enter all the data, and the good idea of digitization fades away. Or even worse – an employee prints these documents on paper to enter them into the computer from there.
It might be more reasonable to create documents in a machine-readable format right away, which would significantly ease the work of accounting. This way, it is possible to receive supporting documents in a structured format like XML. For this purpose, online data exchange channels can be used, including the e-address, which allows receiving documents from a partner that are immediately imported from the online data portal into the accounting system and stored there in electronic format. If data is received through online data channels, it is possible that the document data is imported into the program, and there is an additional option to obtain this document in a human-readable format, such as PDF. In this situation, there are also two options – to save the PDF on your data server or store it in the online channel.
The most important fact is that such documents are easy to process, instantly shareable, and reduce the amount of human effort. This is also the main goal of digitization.