Document Management Isn’t Just for Accountants

From the June 2010 Issue

Many accounting firms have begun to use paperless document management systems to streamline their office, and many are now realizing that there is a big opportunity in helping clients benefit from these systems. If your clients are ready to tackle the paperless document management problem, here is a quick listing of several products that are worth considering.

Each of these products solves the “paperless problem” in a slightly different way, and each product is targeted to different customer sets, but all of them help you and your clients create secure electronic file cabinets where documents can be stored, organized and retrieved in digital form. Some use the cloud and some use on-premise databases to manage the documents, so it’s important for you to consider what your goals are as you evaluate the document management options.

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE FOR QUICKBOOKS
For QuickBooks users, there are several products in the market. Some of the products focus more on automation of the scanning and organizing process, and some go deeper into the documents and apply business rules to initiate a business process. For example, Bill.com takes scanned images of vendor invoices and then provides a complete online Accounts Payable system around those invoices. But products like CNG-Books, SourceLink and PaperSave focus more on scanning, organizing and retrieving documents, and attaching them to accounting transactions.

All of the products listed here provide fairly tight integration with QuickBooks. For example, each (except for Bill.com) provides the user with a prompt to scan and/or attach an existing document to a transaction or list item right when you save a transaction in QuickBooks. With Bill.com, all data entry is done within the Bill.com online application, which is then synchronized automatically with QuickBooks so you never have to enter bills into QuickBooks.

Here is an overview of some of the Document Management products you and your clients should consider:

INTUIT QUICKBOOKS DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT (For QB 2010 and beyond)
www.quickbooks.com

The QuickBooks Document Management service lets you attach documents (scanned images or any other document) to your QuickBooks lists and transactions. The documents are uploaded to an Intuit server and synchronized with QuickBooks transactions.

This new Document Management service works with QuickBooks 2010 and QuickBooks Enterprise 10 and above. Since it’s an online service, you sign up separately for the service and pay fees (after a free trial period) depending on the amount of storage you need. The first 100MB of storage is free, and then the charges are $4.95/month for up to 500MB, $14.95 for up to 1GB, and $29.95 for up to 5GB.

This new feature of QuickBooks 2010 is integrated into QuickBooks throughout the product via the Attach button that appears on transactions.

You can attach documents in three ways. First, you can attach documents by selecting a local document from your hard disk; second, by scanning a paper document; or by attaching a document from the Online Document Inbox. The Inbox is a place where documents were uploaded previously, but not specifically attached to a transaction or list item.

The QuickBooks Document Management service from Intuit is a great value for clients with simple document management needs, and those who are interested in documents connected to QuickBooks transactions or lists.

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SMARTVAULT
www.smartvault.com

SmartVault took a similar approach to attaching documents to QuickBooks transactions, but they’ve filled out the space more completely. SmartVault has been in the market for three years, compared to Intuit’s very recent release of its document management service, and this has given SmartVault many advantages.