- August 1, 2022
- Symphony Ragan, Content Planning & Strategy
For any busy or growing company, implementing and maintaining an efficient document workflow is essential to support the continuous movement of paperwork between employees, customers, departments, and vendors. When it comes to company finance departments, management of efficient document workflows can often be more complex than other departments.
As defined by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the ten elements of financial statements include assets, equity, comprehensive income, owner distributions, owner investments, expenses, liabilities, gains, revenues, and losses. That is a lot of paperwork! Thankfully, there has been a shift over the years in finance from using traditional pen and ink to digital documents.
This digital transformation has allowed financial professionals to experience the unique benefits of using PDF documents.
Benefits of PDF Documents Workflow:
- Faster document completion
- Enhanced convenience
- More secure
- Better document accuracy
- Easier industry compliance
- Faster payment collections
- Better team collaboration
- Increased savings
While finance departments are enjoying healthy benefits from utilizing PDF documents, configuring an effective digital workflow for document completion can often be a challenge. Fortunately, technical solutions designed to support and improve document workflows, such as PDF Editor Pro Plus, are available. Below, we will look at key areas in which finance departments can establish and improve their PDF document workflows.
Bookkeeping
Initiating and tracking the completion and flow of paperwork and reporting required for financial bookkeeping can be a sizeable task, depending on how large a company is. By utilizing tools such as a PDF Editor Pro +, finance professionals can speed up the flow of tracking organizational expenses and sales by quickly exporting spreadsheets to create PDF reports, easily and securely sharing payables and receivables with coworkers and other departments, and more quickly obtaining electronic signatures for approvals from department heads.
Financial Control
Outside of bookkeeping, financial controllers have the key role of comparing and reviewing expense and sales reports to ensure that an organization’s finances are staying on track and can accurately contribute to financial decision making. The reporting and control process can include accounting principles implementation, adjustments to accommodate financial plans and processes, monitoring for accounting oversights and errors, and more. By using PDF documents to maintain financial paperwork workflows, controllers can quickly and easily access bookkeeping documents in a centralized digital location, comparisons and highlights can be made as needed, document edits can be made, PDFs can be generated and eSigned, and reports can be provided to management at a moment’s notice.
Tax Compliance
Calculating, preparing for, and paying taxes is required of all company finance departments. When done right, tax processes can not only be accurately completed but also done to maximize a company’s net income and bottom line. The paperwork necessity of tax preparation and compliance can be more efficient than ever when handled digitally. Due to IRS changes in 2020, most IRS tax forms can be completed electronically on PDF tax forms. By taking tax forms digital, financial accountants can fill forms faster and more accurately, documents can be electronically signed in seconds, and more timely tax filing can be ensured.
Budgeting
Without a strong budgeting process, businesses can expect to struggle in terms of planning and growth. Maintaining budgets is one of the most important things a finance department can do. By utilizing a strong PDF document workflow, accountants can find that budget forecasting, evaluation, and management is easier and more accurate. Access and share spending reports for evaluation, obtain eSignatures for budget approvals, and more in just a few clicks.
Treasury
Company treasurers have the important job of ensuring the business has accessible cash. To perform treasury functions accurate forecasting is essential, which means access to payable, receivable, and spending reports is imperative. When financial documents and reports are generated and stored electronically in PDF format, this means financial department treasurers can more easily access the information they need and share and collaborate with others.
Strategy
Financing, acquisition and merger deals, debt raising, and other strategic decisions are important corporate functions that can be more expediently and expertly conducted through PDF document workflows. Facilitate mergers faster by creating documents in PDF editor, adding fillable and signable form fields, and then sending to designated recipients in seconds, allowing for paperwork completion in minutes instead of days. Additionally, should debts or financing need to be raised, appropriate paperwork can quickly and easily be created, uploaded, signed, and sent to financial institutions on the same day.
Risk Assessment and Management
Management and assessment of risk with the intention of mitigating negative financial impacts within a company are crucial. Financial risk managers will find that easy and organized access to financial PDF documents, as well as the ability to share and collaborate on documents through solutions like PDF Editor Pro +, make key risk analysis more productive and efficient.
