Are They Serious About Paperless Accounting?

Brigante, Cameron, Watters & Strong, LLP
By John Cameron, Managing Partner
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Q: Can you keep records longer if they’re stored electronically?
Cameron: Yes. Paper storage is bulky, so it has to be purged manually from time to time. Electronic storage of financial and tax information, since it involves letters and numbers rather than, say, pictures or other graphic images, is quite inexpensive. As a result, we can keep client files as long as required by state or federal regulations.

Q: How much further do you think this move to a paperless environment will go?
Cameron: In terms of the amount of paper we’re able to replace with electronic files, we’re pretty far along that road already. Of course, we’ll continue to chip away at the remaining paper files and convert as many as we reasonably can.

The bigger changes now being made are mostly in our ability to act as consultants and advisors to our clients – changes made possible by new computer systems and software. Now we’re much better able to show clients business trends as they’re developing using graphic methods that software provides. This helps clients to forecast the need for facilities and equipment, for example; or to control inventories of certain parts or finished goods.

That’s a capability that just wasn’t there with paper records.

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