Document Management is Best When it’s Paperless
The need to use a document management system (DMS) and go paperless has never been more prevalent. I was at a client’s office last week and found myself trapped behind a desk that had 3 foot high stacks of paper. I found it difficult to see the person on the other side who I was training. Needless to say I really affirmed the owner on his purchase of our Practice Management software. I know there are more of you out there swimming in a pool of paper… shame on you! This blog is for you.
As your firm grows and add staff members, you add more and more data to the daily process of running your firm and automating your workflow is a must! Why spend thirty minutes looking for an email from six months ago in Outlook? Why send a tax return to the DMS within your tax software? That makes no sense, and here’s why!
When utilizing the Document Management in our software, you can file all documents by client, by year, by project, by category, and by file name. This subfolder path empowers the user to locate the document within seconds because all subfolders integrate with each other as you use them to filter within the search. Ex: Choose the “Year” 2010 and “Project” 1040 tax return and the system will locate only the documents that are associated to these two filters; whether it is a PDF of the tax return or an email associated to this filter Practice Management will navigate the user to the desired documents.
Any file that can be stored to your computer, whether it is a word document, a PDF document, a JPEG, or an email…ANY TYPE OF FILE that can be stored on your computer can be navigated to by our software. See, the documents are not literally stored within our software; they are stored on your server! We are the link to the document. The Practice Management software is non-proprietary and the document is stored in its original format. These are your documents not ours, retain control over them by utilizing this non-proprietary resource!
Placing a document within the document manager is extremely easy. You may drag and drop or print to PDF and send to Practice Management through our free Adobe add-in. We also offer a free Microsoft Office add-in that allows you send over all pertinent emails or word documents to be stored. The beauty to the system is once the document is placed, you can do a number of administration functions with it. Ex: From the document manager area you can directly email documents to clients, or send documents through our web portal which is password protected and HIPAA, SAS 70, and FINRA compliant, or send them over to review by another staff member or partner: a myriad of possibilities.
Stop jumping around from software applications to accomplish the workflow management task at hand. Centrally locate all steps of your workflow, relieving the wasted time you spend trying to locate the information as well as the compromising of data within multiple databases.