Nearly eight months after implementing their first document management system, employees at San Francisco, Calif.-based Rowbotham & Co. LLP are discovering the benefits of going paperless - or, more accurately, of using less paper. "The advantage is definitely the flexibility of being able to retrieve the documents from anywhere, whether at home or at a client site," explained Cindy Hsieh, a tax manager at Rowbotham & Co., which uses Thomson Tax & Accounting's GoFileRoom, adding that she particularly likes the application's search feature. "For example, if you're looking for a document but cannot recall which client it came from or where you saved it, you can search by keyword and retrieve the files that way."
Although the process of transitioning over to this system "was, in general, pleasant," Hsieh said that the first busy season was challenging.
"Because all of us are learning it at the same time, there is a steep learning curve," she said. "It takes time for people to transition and adjust from reviewing on paper to reviewing on a dual monitor. A lot of time has been spent on setting up initial procedures and updating computer equipment, so it's a lot of back-end admin time involved."
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Being strategic about using less paper through document management software can bring significant change to a firm's cultural climate, organizational efficiencies and finances.
At the Las Vegas, Nev.-based firm of Johnson Jacobson Wilcox, two document management systems are being used for different reasons. "We were looking for final storage and I like the fact that it was in PDF," said Matthew Rudolph, the firm's IT manager of its system, Doc.It. Rudolph added that his firm completes roughly 350 1040s a year, for which they use a different document management system. "Last busy season we really dumped a lot of data into [Doc.It] and started slow in the beginning. That's key, to slowly get the idea of less paper into the firm."
According to Rudolph, when an engagement is done, the firm uses its other system, Pro System fx, to transfer the information into a PDF format. From there, the documents are "locked" into Doc.It. "That's our snapshot, that's what we go back to," he said. "You have to go to extremes to change the PDF."
Rudolph said that the process is working, and the return on investment on the DM software is beginning to pay off, two years into use. The firm is currently considering a relocation and will be able to purchase a building with a much smaller space for storage.
For Donald Mess, president of An Accountancy Corp., in Woodland Hills, Calif., and a five-year customer of Cabinet NG's document management program, CNG-SAFE, the savings were significant. Though his company has just three staff members, he bought scanners for each of his workstations. The scanners were able to process 25 copies a minute and scanned every document dated back to 1996.
