Paperless Systems Can Help Organizations Eliminate Accounting Errors

Accounting issues can be a nightmare for companies, particularly when auditors and government agencies come calling.

North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services learned that the hard way when a recent state audit revealed that failures in the Medicaid billing system over the past five years had allowed a dozen employees to accumulate more than half a million dollars in bonuses.

“Neither one of [the new personnel officials] knew what was going on,” Beth Wood, state auditor, told WRAL.com. “Then, you have DHHS over there doing it, so they’re not going to run out and tell anybody. … This whole process was not managed appropriately.”

According to the news source, manual errors in the payroll system accounted for the majority of mistakes. In addition, there were no monitoring capabilities in place because the state did not require employees to receive approval for overtime payments.

Paperless document management offers a solution

Collecting data for audits can be a difficult and time-consuming process, particularly for companies that have not moved their accounting functions to an electronic workflow.

Before Sauder Custom Fabrication, a steel pressure vessels manufacturer implemented PairSoft solutions in 2009, President and CFO Sandy Moore said completing audits required that three employees work for two straight weeks collecting and organizing documents.

“I would go and plow through a whole year’s worth of documentation to find what they needed and hope it hadn’t been filed in the wrong spot,” she said.

Through the use of paperless document management, Sauder has been able to gather documents faster and in a more efficient manner. Cathy Schumer, corporate controller at WS Packaging, said her company has seen similar results since deploying PairSoft software.

WS Packaging recently transitioned its accounting processes to the electronic workflow. In addition to providing an array of benefits for the accounting department – Schumer said it’s now “really easy to find things” – paperless document management has proven to be a time saver throughout the audit process.