- July 28, 2022
- Symphony Ragan, Content Planning & Strategy
Accounting is not just a standalone industry; it’s a verb encompassing the important financial functions of businesses throughout each and every industry. Digital Accounting is so important that entire departments are dedicated to ensuring efficiency with essential financial matters like taxes, payroll, planning, bookkeeping, and more.
Smart, structured, and knowledgeable approaches are required by any company’s accounting department to ensure healthy business growth, management, and compliance. To do this, more accounting professionals and departments are switching to digital processes. Digital accounting and bookkeeping are natural progressions for accounting due to clients’ increased demand for electronic options and the development of intuitive and helpful electronic tools used for digital presentations and process management, such as electronic signatures.
Before we dive into the many benefits of switching to digital PDF documents, let us first look at what digital accounting means exactly. Formally, digital accounting is the act of completing, transferring, and sharing financial information in a digital format as opposed to a traditional paper format. Informally, the digitization of financial tasks is a step that has transformed accounting for the better.
So, what makes digital paperwork so beneficial for accounting departments?
While each company’s accounting department will utilize digital documents to support their own individual and unique workflows, there are certain benefits that span the width of most businesses and industries.
- Improved Scalability: As a business grows, its financial needs can change at the drop of a hat. By utilizing software tools like QuickBooks for accounting and Foxit PDF Editor Pro + for financial documents and signatures, accounting departments can be ready for anything by harnessing the capabilities of improved access to accounting records and faster completion of required documents.
- Better Security: When traditional paper documents are used, there is always an increased possibility they get lost, stolen, or viewed by outside parties unintentionally. This can prove problematic in accounting processes because much of the information shared is personal identifying information (PII) such as social security numbers and bank account numbers. Switching to digital documents and electronic signing adds extra security that ensures more controlled visibility and access to keep information safer.
- Faster Document Completion: Meeting financial deadlines, ensuring timely tax filing, and gathering important financial data and approvals have never been easier than before the digitization of accounting paperwork. Digital documents can be emailed, signatures collected in a matter of minutes, and completed documents sent back to the accountants who need them all before the end of business each day.
- Enhanced Convenience: Whether requesting employee paperwork completion or sending off documents to complete new loan funding, completing everything digitally adds an element of convenience for everyone involved. With PDF documents and electronic signatures being used, paperwork can be signed in just a few clicks from wherever the signer is and at their convenience.
- Better Workflow: When accountants need to collaborate with other departments or employees on document completion, what better way than digitally? Paperwork can be emailed to recipients quickly for easy completion, team members can collaborate on documents as needed, and managers can sign off and approve financial forms faster. Plus, when templates are created using electronic signature solutions such as Foxit eSign, accountants can ensure that regularly used documents and forms can be generated faster and more consistently.
- Simplified Compliance: FINRA and IRS compliance is a mustin the world of accounting. By utilizing tools like knowledge-based authentication (KBA), two-factor authentication (2FA), multi-factor authentication (MFA), detailed audit trails, and completion certificates, businesses and accounting departments can more easily comply with any regulatory requirements by financial institutions and organizations.
