10 Opportunities For Optimizing A Firm’s Administrative Department

10. Utilize Digital Invoices: Just as payables processing is time and paper intensive, the process that most firms go through to deliver an invoice requires a lot of handling and paper, envelopes and postage. Most business users are becoming comfortable with digital invoices in their own firm so they are the easiest to target for generating a PDF of the invoice and delivering it either through email or the client’s portal. Once the business owner is comfortable with this process, it can be used to deliver their personal invoices, and eventually copies of their tax returns and organizers. Invoices will go out faster, and the firm will have a record of when they were sent and to whom so they can be easily re-sent if the client “didn’t receive the invoice.”

While most firms focus on fine-tuning their tax and audit production practices, don’t forget about administration because there can be significant savings in both time and resources, which will definitely impact the firm’s bottom line.

Roman H. Kepczyk, CPA.CITP is Director of Consulting for Xcentric and works exclusively with accounting firms to optimize their internal production processes within their tax, audit, client services and administrative areas. He recently updated his Quantum of Paperless Guide (Amazon.com) which outlines 32 digital best practices for accounting firms.