Why ‘’Go Paperless’’?

Typically, invoices, receipts, memos, reports, and various files clutter many of our desks. Often, the challenge is to find the relevant paper!

COVID-19 is forcing a change in the business environment - promoting a paperless culture!

As most of us are aware, paper can harbour the virus for up to 24 hours. People, in many instances, are hesitating, and will continue to hesitate to accept paper or come in close contact with customers. Airlines, train, hotels, and companies are removing “human to human” contact. Altruism is not driving this, but self-interest. Indeed, many companies are even asking their lawyers – ‘’Can our employees sue us if they are forced to handle paper’’.

Employee expenses, which many businesses preferred to see entered on paper, with receipts attached, will also undergo a sea change. Employees would not want to deliver their expenses by hand to the approvers. The approvers and the finance managers will be uncomfortable touching paper because there would be a question about the potential infection risk.

Monty Python song “Always look on the bright side of life” offers opportunity to benefit from the pandemic – GO PAPERLESS!

Going Paperless does not mean that businesses will no longer use paper. Instead, use it sparingly and wisely, with a view to reduce the risk of infection.

Challenges of Using Manual Paper Process:

Limited access to data underpins the disadvantages of having manual paper processes at work (reported on LarsonAllen.com – Going Paperless Saves Time and Hassle). Consider the following:

1. Workers spend 5-15% of their time reading information but up to 50% of their time trying to locate it.

2. 7.5% of documents lost; the remaining 3% misfiled.

3. Average cost to manually process a single invoice: $24.

4. Average labour costs spent by organisations:

a. $20 to file a document!

b. $120 to find a misfiled report!

c. $200 to reproduce a lost record!

Benefits of Going Paperless:

Given the costs and the risks, COVID-19 presents a compelling opportunity for businesses to adopt digital technology and manage finances by going paperless, and benefit from the following:

1. Increases efficiency and productivity

2. Less error-prone

3. Ease of sharing documents

4. Communication is faster

5. Saves time, money, and effort

6. Data security

7. Compliant

8. Visibility

Going paperless creates an environmentally sound and productive organisation.

The Paperless Future with ExpenseOnDemand:

Kick start your paperless initiative with Expense Management Automation. The paperless future is here with ExpenseOnDemand.

1. Our paperless solution gets rid of the Excel sheets. The mobile manages business expenses.

2. The mobile reads the receipts automagically to create an expense, creating a virtual paper trail.

3. Each receipt also captures the longitude and latitude, which ensures the approver can check the accuracy of each expense.

4. Even credit card transactions can be imported. Hence, the expense policy can be enforced.

5. An intelligent workflow allows the claimant and the approver to see the status of each item in real-time.

6. Our intuitive dashboard enables end-to-end, real-time monitoring, and reporting of each expense.

7. Mileage is calculated digitally via GPS – no more maintaining mileage logs.

8. Integration with multiple accounting software (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, Tally, and many more).

9. On-boarding takes less than 5 minutes, with a free trial for 30 days.

10. All this power is available in our starter pack for £1 or INR 35 per user per month!

For more information on ExpenseOnDemand, visit our website . You can also follow our social channels @expenseondemand. Take the 30-day free trial with ExpenseOnDemand. Click here to Try the App .

So, let us embrace this new future and head into the new world together – from paper to paperless!

Image Credits: Artem Beliaikin

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