Stress-Free Auditing

You’ll never hear anyone say that they are looking forward to stress-free auditing – in fact, according to a survey by Wakefield Research, 37% of accounting professionals said a sales tax audit would be more stressful than a divorce.

An audit is an inspection of a companies’ financial reports, systems and processes to ensure the correct procedures are being followed, and to ensure that companies are compliant and risk-free. They can also mark any discrepancies between your policies and your procedures – what you should be doing vs what you are actually doing.

One of the biggest audit pain is that auditors can request a myriad of documentation. If you rely on manual processes to manage your documents, this could result in documents being scattered across your business – in mail inbox, filing cabinets, H drives, desk drawers, off-site storage, etc.

Manually collating all the documents not only requires a lot of time and effort but storing your documents in such a disorganized way can also result in being non-compliant. Imagine, how would your business be affected if a document had been misfiled or lost and was inaccessible to you and your auditors? If your employees not following the correct procedures could result in non-compliance. And, being non-compliance with industry regulations can have serious business, financial, legal and reputation related implications.

But, an audit should be a stress-free experience for you or your business. The docEdge DMS can help you manage your documents, streamline your business processes and provide visibility of compliance actions.

docEdge DMS allows you to create, capture, store, authorize, deliver and manage business-critical documents. All of your documents and data are stored electronically in one central repository. Forms, applications, paper documents, and schedules can be stored, with indexes, to create searchable content, allowing you to find and retrieve files in seconds.

Here are the ways in which docEdge DMS can help your company to be audit-ready:

• Document Security

1. Sensitive information is stored securely.
2. Sets user permissions for your staff and control who has access to which documents and how they can use them.
3. Ensure the right documents are dealt with by the right people.

• Consistent Procedures

1. With document process workflow in place, you know that the correct procedures are always followed.
2. Escalate approvals and reviews to ensure deadlines are not missed.
3. Alerts will highlight any deviation from the document process.
4. Handle exceptions consistently by creating a separate workflow with its own set of rules.
5. Using Electronic Workflows increase efficiency and accuracy.

• Flexible Workflow

1. React to changes in policies and compliance regulations quickly by updating the workflow.
2. Once a workflow is in place, you can alter the process easily, often without having to re-train staff, making continuous process improvement a straightforward procedure.
3. You can update procedures across the whole business simultaneously.

• Managing the Document Life Cycle

1. When a document is stored in docEdge DMS, you can be confident that you are always working with the latest version, but version control allows you to access all previous versions if necessary.
2. If selected documents must be stored for a specific length of time (in line with compliance regulations), rules can be set to automatically move documents to archive, or delete them when they have expired.

• Document Audit Trail

1. An audit trail is a report showing who has accessed what document, when, and how it was used.
2. You can easily verify that the latest version of a document is archived, and can also track system admin changes.
3. Audit trails report provide detailed information for auditors, providing full visibility into your processes and helping to prove compliance.

• Easing the Audit Process

1. docEdge DMS allows auditors to have secure access to your documents via a standard web browser.
2. Inspections can be conducted remotely with no disruption to you and your colleagues.
3. It has powerful keyword search functions, documents needed for audits are available within a fraction of seconds.
4. During the inspection, auditors can simply export any information they need in a digital format, saving everyone time and money.

Audits don’t have to be a stressful experience when you take advantage of the intelligent features of a docEdge DMS to manage your documents and data effectively. Proactively managing audits and compliance can increase the transparency of your business.

“With the correct workflow, procedures and policies in place, supplying the correct documents to auditors and outside organizations can be quick, simple, unobtrusive and stress-free.”