Document Imaging in Business - Part 7: Paperless Accounting

Implementing electronic document imaging software means the end of filing cabinets and folders and a big step toward a totally paperless office, but that's not all. It can also mean a completely new method of dealing with mainframe accounting; with it the receivables and payables processes can be re-engineered and the face of the accounting department altered forever.

Mainframe Accounting with Image Enabling

Let's go back to our hypothetical business, Majesstix International. Majesstix creates appoximately twelve thousand receivable invoices each month, and about that many customer statements. Before Majesstix went paperless, the storage and retrieval of the paper invoices and statements — along with dealing with all of the corrections that necessarily creep up during the course of normal business — took a vast quantity of time and energy.

Majesstix's mainframe business accounting suite wasn't equipped with any kind of document management software, so Majesstix used PC-based document imaging software and built a paperless workflow system around the mainframe. Their software used the basic interface for dealing with images discussed in Part 6.

Now that their document management system is fully active, the receivable invoices and statements printed by the mainframe are printed-to-file rather than on paper, and the document management software treats those files just like it does incoming scans — identifying them, auto-tagging them, and filing them in the correct part of the mainframe database. The data is organized like an electronic filing cabinet, with separate folders acting as 'drawers' for the invoice documents, adjustments and corrections documents, customer statements, and other customer-related correspondence. Those files that aren't immediately recognized by the software, or that simply need more detailed tagging, are tagged by hand using the PC-based document management software.

As documents arrive, they are set up in batches, and Majesstix' new full-time employee, the scanning-and-workflow expert, scans in everything as the batches are passed into his hands. The owner of Majesstix gets regular reports detailing the savings in time and money that the paperless office workflow earns him each quarter, giving him (and the entire company) good reason to continually look for ways to further improve the process. The document management software saves the company hundreds of man-hours each month that would be spent looking for paper documents, and thousands of dollars in paper-related costs every year.

About Ademero Ademero develops document imaging software and provides related professional services designed to automate business processes and simplify office workflow.Content Central, is a browser-based Document Management Software created to provide organizations with a convenient way to capture, retrieve, and manage information originating in hard copy or digital form.

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