Taming the Paperwork: A Success Story

The Trusted Professional
The Newspaper of the NYSSCPA
May 1, 2005
Vol. 8, No.7
By Ronald D. Kranzler
DOWNLOAD THIS ARTICLE

We discussed our goals and realized that we needed to reengineer our processes for preparing financial statements, tax returns and other documents. In an effort to meet increasing client needs as well as regulatory standards and deadlines, we decided that we needed a proactive approach to data management and data output. We knew that if we wanted to continue to be successful, it was critical that we standardize our work processes and better organize client documents and files. While we recognized that audit automation would lead to time savings, our primary focus was to ensure quality and achieve greater consistency in the documents we produced.

As the first step, we assigned an objective non-partner with technology expertise to be the project manager. Our project manager began his search for solutions at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ Technology Conference.

Identifying and Selecting Software Solutions
Our project manager identified software packages that could provide us with the necessary tools for managing documents, trial balances and journal entries, as well as the import/export features we need for tax return and financial statement preparation. Some of these packages provided an open environment where users could easily change their engagement files, while others offered controls that prevented users from changing the standardized components of the engagement file. We evaluated the systems and addressed a number of other issues, including our firm’s old accounting software, untrained users, the lack of a uniform culture, and budget constraints.

PreviousNext