An office cramped with filing cabinets and buried in paper is inefficient and can hinder collections and cash flow. Here are just a few problems with paper:
- Paper is expensive and a wasteful.
- It is a slow and inefficient.
- Paper creates more work, filing cabinets and less office space.
- You can’t work remotely when your business runs on paper. It ties you to the office.
- Paper is hard to get rid of. Today, almost 40% of all invoices are still paper.
How to Get Rid of Paper
To get rid of paper means you need email communications with your vendors and customers, which means of course that you need their email addresses. That is where the challenge lies – 30-70% of customer and vendor email addresses are unknown. Many companies have done business for years with customers and vendors using paper. The lack of email addresses is not recognized as a problem until a company plans to go digital.
How to Get Missing Email Addresses
It takes time and effort to call for missing email addresses, and mailing letters to request email addresses adds the cost of processing and mailing. If you have hundreds or thousands of missing email addresses, collecting them manually may not be practical, especially if your accounting department is already slammed by the coronavirus.
If you want to go paperless and automate your business processes, you’ve got to find an automated solution to collect missing email addresses. You can use a free Google form to do that, and then import the emails into your accounting system.
How to Go Digital
Once the email addresses are in your system you can:
- Announce that you are going paperless on your side
- Begin email delivery of statements, emails and remittances
- Introduce a self-service portal for vendors and customers
Getting rid of paper does not need to be an impossible task. With a connected accounting solution for your AR and AP teams to coordinate work with customers and vendors you can go digital and reap the benefits of office automation.
Lockstep, a leader in cloud-based connected accounting solutions, can help you boost productivity and optimize cash flow with:
- Digital Onboarding – Collect master data directly from your customers and vendors
- Accounting Inbox – Make it easy to divvy up work and track progress
- Smart Automation – Automate menial task with accounting integration
- Online Accounts – Give customers and vendors online access to their accounts
Lockstep is an experienced software partner that can help you increase efficiency and accelerate cash flow.
If you would like to learn more about how you can benefit from connected accounting solutions, please contact Lockstep at www.lockstephq.com.
