Accounting Files: Don’t Pull Mountains Of Metadata!
Most businesses use an accounting system to manage their receivables, payables, and to project cash flow. Many do so by scanning accounting files with a system like Laserfiche.
Tax and industry regulations require companies to keep documents that back up transactions recorded in accounting systems. Thoughtfully linking your accounting system to your document management system provides flexibility as your needs change, but must consider how much metadata you’re pulling. Accounting systems provide a lot of information, but you don’t need all of it to retrieve your documents.
When I talk about linking your accounting system, I mean “looking up” data out of the database behind your system. This way, no one has to manually type every piece of information you need to retrieve the document. You can input a single piece of information when you scan accounting files, then retrieve the rest of the data you need. Recently, I ran into a situation that illustrates the benefit of linking your systems. There are benefits long after the initial scan in cases like these. At the same time, I encountered a situation where populating additional data didn’t make sense.
When Are Accounting Files Ripe For Reprocessing?
I work closely with a client who serves foster children and provides family services throughout the state. They operate multiple group homes, provide respite care, and other social services throughout the state. Each service and facility has various expenses that must be tracked.
Several years ago, they linked their Laserfiche system to their accounting system to extract data from each invoice. Today, they use Laserfiche Workflow to extract data about each invoice they scan. Initially, we asked them how they wanted to retrieve their documents. This question helped us determine that we should use the following information for each invoice: Vendor Name, Vendor ID, Amount, and Date. We could retrieve all of this from the invoice number once the invoice was in the system.
This worked well for a few years, but I recently got a call. “Eren, we are under an audit, our accounting team spends hours looking for invoices because we don’t have some of this data in our Laserfiche system. Can you help?”
They were looking for the account codes for each invoice. This is easy to research in their accounting system, but Laserfiche didn’t contain that information. Luckily, each invoice is uniquely linked to a record in the accounting system that has all of that data. With a thirty-minute rework of their existing process, we looked up each account code from the invoice number. This solved the immediate problem. Then the next ask came. “Could you also grab the amount for each account code?“
I paused. The answer was yes, I could. The dilemma was determining if I SHOULD. Our criteria for metadata is “retrieval, retention, reporting.” While this request fell under the reporting criteria, another system already did that? Was there any benefit to storing this data in Laserfiche, too?
How Much Is Too Much?
The system of record is the accounting system. Users need to retrieve the entire file by the code or codes assigned, but no user needs to search by that distribution amount. That information already exists in a useable format in the accounting system. We could pull the information, but it wouldn’t serve a practical use because that detail lives in the accounting system.
I explained this to the organization. They understood that “can” and “should” are distinct. To fulfill an audit, they needed to retrieve documents based on account code, but there was no circumstance where they would need to retrieve the document based on the individual amounts for each code. If we fed this data into the Laserfiche system, which report would be authoritative? They agreed that this was redundant, and we agreed that we didn’t need all the data.
I share this with you to illustrate two points. The first is that your needs may evolve, and closely linking your applications allows you to be flexible as new needs emerge. The second is that you don’t need to re-create your accounting system within your document management system. You just need enough, and the flexibility to make changes when you change your definition of enough.
Initial requirements often change over time. The trick is using a system that can anticipate change in the future, even if you don’t know what that change will be. If you’re looking to make changes in how you work with your scanned accounting files, Deau can make recommendations regardless of the systems you use.