Are They Serious About Paperless Accounting?

Brigante, Cameron, Watters & Strong, LLP
By John Cameron, Managing Partner
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Q: This is leading toward electronic storage, right?
Cameron: Yes. Over the past five years, accounting firms have moved to electronic data storage and away from paper records at a much faster pace. There are lots of advantages besides avoiding the costs and inefficiencies I’ve mentioned.

The ability to retrieve, move, share and store information instantly has to be at the top of the list. We no longer have to put a client on hold, or call back after we’ve retrieved information from their files. We simply bring it up on the screen while we’re talking.

Our accountants no longer need to be near the files of client information in order to do their jobs. They can work equally well in our office, in the client’s facility or in their own homes – anywhere there is an Internet connection.

Q: The "distributed workforce"...
Cameron: That’s right. Most of our accountants like working from home on occasion, where they needn’t fight the commuting traffic. And when they need to see a client, they bring along a laptop computer, so all the client’s files are at their fingertips.

Some of the government’s new anti-fraud measures require that during the audit process, we carry out physical inspections of certain things and talk to clients’ employees. So, we have to be on the scene in the client workplace from time to time, and it’s helpful when we can do this work electronically, with instant access to the records in our firm.

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