Paperless CPA Office - Myth or Reality?
As a new CPA on the block, about eight years ago, I had made it
a practice to read as much as possible on practice management
along with the regular reading I had to do keep up with the
technical matters. I came across articles after articles about
how it was possible for CPAs to operate in an almost paperless
office. It was, however, quite difficult for me to imagine my
own office being a paperless office.
"How could a CPA really operate a practice without papers?" I
would wonder all the time. I thought of these talks about
paperless offices as being something of a creation of
imagination about how life would be in 2035 when I may not be
there.
The technology that I was using in my office was helping me
improve the production. It was also helping me learn some of the
more advanced possibilities in my system. In my small practice,
it was a simple client-server network with a T1 internet
connection. It was during one of my overseas trips about four
years ago, that I discovered the power of my system to its best.
With the T1 connection and a static IP address, I was able to
work on my office system from over 10,000 miles away without any
problems. This was a wonderful experience and my desire to learn
more about the paperless office became extremely strong at this
point.
I spent a lot of time, powered by my strong desire, to learn on
the ways I could possibly convert my CPA practice into a
paperless practice. I had already enjoyed the pleasure of
working on my office system from around the world. I thought
that if I could only access all the other papers I needed to
look at while working on a client's file I would not even need
to be in the office at all to work. Besides enjoying the
frustrations of continuous interruptions, accessing papers was
the only remaining reason for me to be in the office. Sure there
were other reasons, but to carry out my work for a client,
accessing papers was the only one.
Now that my desire was so strong, I started running into
various pre-packaged solutions advertised in the direct mail and
magazine advertisements. I checked out a few, called a few 800
numbers and received some promotion materials. All turned out to
be beyond my budget. I had learned a lot about the potentials of
my simple office network by now, and figured out that I was too
poor to afford some of the good pre-packaged solutions available
out there for CPAs.
Upon a thorough study of the technology in my office and the
hardware available in the market at affordable costs, I came to
an unbelievable conclusion. It was unbelievable because based on
my calculations the cost of converting to a paperless office was
going to be 5 or 10% of what it would cost me to go with a
pre-packaged solution. This happened within one year of my trip
overseas and it has been three years since then. I could not
believe it but I had a gut feeling that I was right in my
conclusion. I considered the cost of failing in an attempt to go
paperless not too high. I was already managing a paper-full
practice and if an attempt to go paperless were to fail - I
would remain where I was - a paper-full practice. I spent a
considerable amount of time developing the detailed plans on the
whole process of going paperless, ordered the scanner that I had
studied and found to be most affordable and launched the
project. In terms of managing the staff time to work on the
conversion process and managing priorities it was quite
challenging. The process itself was quite enjoyable and
revealing (about the hidden treasures in my filing cabinets) but
above all quite enriching.
At the conclusion of my project to go paperless, about 60 days
from when it started, I discovered that it was truly possible to
manage an almost paperless office. I enjoyed more than two years
of paperless office at my practice. The efficiency of the office
went up significantly during that period. Clients experienced a
different, a much higher level, of efficiency in service.
There were certain things that went right for me in this
process. I was able to develop my understanding in this area
over the years due to my curiosity and had a good handle over
the capacity of my seemingly small office network. I discovered
that the current office networks, in many small CPA offices, are
like human brains. They are highly powerful and highly
underutilized.
A paperless CPA office is no more a thing of the future. The
true beneficiaries of this move by CPAs are their clients. CPAs
who do not have to spend a lot of their time pushing papers and
locating lost documents, would definitely be able to provide
high-level services to their clients and benefit them more. All
clients deserve a CPA who is at least paperless at the basic
level, which is completely possible with a small office computer
network and a very small investment.