Category: Automation

The Cost of Paper

9/7/2020

With the move to working from home, one of the restrictions for many organizations is the reliance on paper. When an organization looks at moving to a paperless office the decision is made to postpone the process due to costs. These costs are easy to calculate and include scanners, multi-monitors, PDF editing software, and electronic document management software.

However, a paperless office may cost less. To make the decision a calculation of the cost of paper in your organization is needed.

Using our spreadsheet let’s calculate the cost of paper for your organization.

Paper and Printing

How many boxes of paper does your organization use a year?

With the volume of paper, we can calculate the total pages and estimate the cost for the paper and printing.

Time to File a Document

Using the spreadsheet, input the average number of pages per document, time to file a document, and hourly staff cost.

For many, this time is considered equal to filing electronically; however, the time to file paper can be much longer when you include the walk to and from the filing cabinet. Electronic document management may also provide automatic filing of documents.

Time to Pull Documents

How long does it take someone to pull a document? For many offices, this time can be even longer than the time to originally file it.

Consider the case of the paper document that you can’t find. How long did you spend yesterday looking for a document? Moving to paperless allows for all documents to be indexed and found with a quick search.

Documents Purged

Purging of paper documents can be very labour intensive as you locate, retrieve and document the files being purged. A paperless system can do this function automatically.

Shredding Service

Purging of paper documents can be very labour intensive as you locate, retrieve and document the files being purged. A paperless system can do this function automatically.

Space for Filing Cabinets

When you calculate the square footage used for filing cabinets it quickly adds up to a significant cost.

Summary

After completing the spreadsheet, the cost of paper documents may surprise you. Reducing the use of paper and the related cost of paper can often cover the costs of moving to a paperless office. A paperless office will also provide the benefits of improved workflow, improved document sharing, quicker access, and an improved working from home experience.

To learn more about the advantages of eliminating the cost of paper, consider participating in K2's Paperless Office.

Ward Blatch

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Automation of Bills and Receipts - A Followup

7/4/2020

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In our previous post, we discussed using one of the online automation tools to process your bills and receipts. For many who are not using an online accounting solution, the advantages appeared limited. In this post, we will cover the benefits these tools, like Receipt Bank, bring to any business.

Organization and Filing

The efficiencies gained from these services include:

Time previously required to file, archive, and destroy bills and receipts
Additional office space made available by the elimination of filing cabinets
Quick access to any invoice or receipt
Automatic extraction of the vendor, date, invoice number, amount, and taxes to speed up posting
Automatic account allocation of expenses

The quick access to any expense document is possible by a search based on the amount, date, supplier, payment method, category, or any combination of these variables.

The need to go to the vendor site, log in, download, and process the invoice is automatic with the tool fetching recurring invoices from a long list of supported vendors. Check out the full listing for Receipt Bank at https://help.receipt-bank.com/hc/en-us/articles/360005754174-List-of-Suppliers-for-Invoice-Fetch

Transaction Summary

Now that you have all of your invoices and receipts automatically saved and the data extracted, you can export the critical information. Using Receipt Bank as an example, filter the list of documents in the archive and select the receipts and invoices to export.

Figure 1 - Select Items to Export

Now click export, select the format from the drop-down list, and click Generate.

Figure 2 - Select CSV Format from the drop-down list

Export your items using the various options to find the CSV format that works best for you. For this example, we used the Receipt Bank Default.

Save the exported CSV file in a folder with the other exports from previous days, weeks or months.

Summarizing with Excel

With all the export files in a single folder, you can now use Excel’s get data from folder feature to combine the results into a single table or pivot table.

Get Data from Folder is found in the data ribbon under Get Data > From File > From Folder. The panel that opens requires you to complete the folder path.

Figure 3 - Get Data Folder

With the folder path completed, click OK and the list of files will be displayed, now click combine.

Figure 4 - Review the list and click Combine & Load

The next screen provides a sample from the First File, click OK. The data is now in a single table in Excel.

Figure 5 - Combined Data

With the next export file added to the folder, a right-click on the table and selecting refresh will cause Excel to rerun the query and update the table to include the new data.

A summary of the receipts using the sumifs function or a pivot table can be the basis of your accounting entry.

Figure 6 - Summary of Expenses

Export the receipts to a PDF as a backup for the entry.

Summary

It is time to look at automation to extract data from your receipts and bills. Whether you connect to online accounting, export and summarize for posting or post each entry in your accounting system manually, the time savings are significant.

To try Receipt Bank free for 30 days go to Receipt Bank to sign up. Other options include Auto Entry and HubDoc .

Ward Blatch, CPA CA

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Automation of Bills and Receipts

6/1/2020

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With today’s automation tools it is quick and easy to capture data from receipts, bills, invoices and bank statements. Applications like Auto Entry, Hub Doc, and Receipt Bank provide a low-cost system to save significant time in processing your organization’s bills and receipts.

Using Receipt Bank as an example, let’s take a closer look at what these services can do for your organization.

RESOURCE: Receipt Bank Submission Methods

Submitting Items

The first step is getting supporting documents to process receipts, bills, and expense reports. Receipt Bank provides several ways to do this, including snapping a picture with your smartphone, emailing, scanning, using a drobox folder, or automatic fetching.

Fetching will automatically login to supplier sites and download your receipts for you. Receipt Bank checks authorized suppliers weekly. Fetching frees you from having to visit supplier websites, logging in, finding the document and downloading it. Check out the extensive list of currently supported suppliers at https://help.receipt-bank.com.

Processing

Once Receipt Bank receives the bill or receipt, it uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to extract key fields from the document. These fields include vendor, date, total, taxes, and the payment method if applicable.

With all the information extracted by Receipt Bank, you simply input a category for the expense. If it is a frequent vendor, you can configure supplier rules, including the category, default tax, and payment method.

Posting and Summarizing

With the details completed, you can now add the invoice to an expense report, post it directly to your online accounting program (including QuickBooks, Sage Accounting, Xero, and others), or download the details as a PDF or CSV file.

If you are not using an online accounting program, you can use the CSV file to import the transactions or create a summary for posting into your accounting system.

Improved Workflow and Time Savings

The result of using one of these automation tools is:

Bills and receipts are quickly captured and processed
Multiple supplier documents are automatically downloaded and processed
No more time spent sorting and filing invoices and receipts

Quick and easy access to any document stored
Secure archival of documents

I recommend giving automation a try for yourself. I have found the improved workflow and time savings are significant. Use the following links to sign up for a free trial.

Receipt Bank
Auto Entry
HubDoc

Ward Blatch

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Authors

Ward Blatch
Ward provides consulting and training services as the Managing Director of K2E Canada Inc. He joined K2E Canada in 2005 and is responsible for the Canadian operations of this international consulting group, which provides professional development technology education for accountants across Canada and the US. Ward lives in rural Nova Scotia and can be reached at ward@k2e.ca.

Alan Salmon
Alan Salmon is recognized as Canada’s leading analyst in the area of accounting technology. He has nearly 35 years of business, management systems, education and journalism experience, has a degree in Science and an Advanced Teaching Certificate from the University of Toronto. Alan has now retired from teaching and lives in Brampton, Ontario with his wife Nancy. He can be reached at alan@k2e.ca

Tommy Stephens
Tommy is one of the shareholders in K2 Enterprises, affiliating with the Firm in 2003 and joining as a shareholder in 2017. At K2, Tommy focuses on creating and delivering content and is responsible for many of the Firm's management and marketing functions. Tommy resides in the metro Atlanta area. You may reach him at tommy@k2e.com.

Randy Johnson
Randy is a nationally recognized educator, consultant, and writer with over 40 years experience in Strategic Technology Planning, Accounting Software Selection, Paperless, Systems and Network Integration, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning, Business Development and Management, Process Engineering and outsourced managed services. Randy can be reached at randy@k2e.com

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The Cost of Paper

Paper and Printing

Time to File a Document

Time to Pull Documents

Documents Purged

Shredding Service

Space for Filing Cabinets

Summary

Ward Blatch

Automation of Bills and Receipts - A Followup

Organization and Filing

Transaction Summary

Summarizing with Excel

Summary

Ward Blatch, CPA CA

Automation of Bills and Receipts

Submitting Items

Processing

Posting and Summarizing

Archive

Improved Workflow and Time Savings

Ward Blatch

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