We remember the day we went paperless.
Staring at us was a stack of our client’s Tax (T1 & T2) Receipts, Invoices, and countless Journals, the same pile we’d rifle through in anxiety every time a Tax (T1 & T2) deadline rolled around of our clients.
It took us hours of time, a ruthless mindset, and more caffeine than we would like to admit, to sort, upload, and store everything online. But once we would finish, the result was pure relief.
Years later, we still run our Tax Prep and Accounting Services Business entirely from the Cloud. We can’t remember the last time we wasted money on a printer, we travel light (no training manuals stuffed into my carry on), and whether we are out of the office for a quick meeting with our clients or working from a different country, we can access, search, and share all of our documents with teammates and our clients, in just a few clicks.
While it takes some getting used to, we guarantee that going paperless will save you a whole lot of time and hassle during Tax (T1 & T2) season and throughout the year. No matter if your Business is brick-and-mortar, or if you’re an office-less entrepreneur, as long as you’ve got a smartphone, a laptop, and access to the internet, here’s how you can make your Business semi- or fully- paperless, too.
Scan Upload, Shared
When you first go paperless, scanning, uploading, and storing documents online is where you’ll do the bulk of the work.
Use Dropbox to store scanned versions of business cards, receipts, photos, and documents. For bank statements and utility bills, use FileThis. The app automatically downloads these documents once they’re available and saves them to my Dropbox folder.
If you’ve got a lot to get through, Evernote’s ScanSnap scanner can make your life easier. After scanning, it automatically uploads and stores your documents to your Evernote account. Alternatively, you can outsource the process using Shoeboxed’s Magic Envelope.Just stuff your receipts into the envelope, send it off, and they’ll scan and upload everything for you.
Remember, to keep the CRA happy you need to hang onto Tax (T1 & T2) receipts for three years after the filing date or Tax (T1 & T2) deadline (whichever is later), but you don’t need to keep physical copies. Scan and store the Tax (T1 & T2) receipts you need to keep, and shred the rest.
Store Your Photos in Flickr
Most people aren’t aware that Flickr gives all users one terabyte of free space — that’s enough to save around 800,000 photos online. Although it’s meant to be used as a public photo sharing network, use it as a private online storage account. How? During the upload process, simply set the share settings of my photos to ‘private’. That way, you the only person who can view the photos, which you can access and download via your laptop or the Flickr smart phone app.
Also, by storing all of your photos in Flickr, rather than in multiple folders across other cloud storage services, you know where your images are at all times, and you don’t clog up my other cloud storage drives (Dropbox, Evernote) with bulky photo files.
Collaborate on Documents with Google Drive
Google Docshas been a godsend for your business. Use it to create and collaborate on documents with clients and others in your team. It’s just like Microsoft Office, but it allows multiple users to simultaneously view, edit, comment on, and even chat together within documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and forms. Oh, and it auto saves every few minutes, so if your computer crashes unexpectedly, all of your work is safe. Take that, MS Word.
Manage Your Finances in the Cloud
We can’t emphasize this enough: keeping your finances hyper organized in the cloud has been the key to eliminating stress during Tax season. Manage invoices through Freshbooks. Outsource your bookkeeping to Accountable Business Services (ABS) ABSPROF. And use Expensify to snap and digitally store a photo of your receipts every time you buy something for your business.
Sign Documents Digitally
Remember when we used to sign documents by printing them out, signing them, scanning them, and then mailing them back in the post? Today that process seems like such a waste of time. Use ShoeBoxed to digitally sign documents with the camera on your Macbook. If you’re using a PC, or if you need your clients to digitally sign contracts, Adobe’s EchoSign allows you to send clients a link to a secure page where they can digitally sign documents using a smart phone touch screen and their finger.
Create an Online Company Library
If your Business calls for the use of internal documents, use Bloomfire to create an online library for your team. Employees can upload documents (guides, manuals, interesting articles that help you get your work done) to your company’s account, for everyone to access virtually. Telling your employee: “You can find it in Bloomfire!” saves everyone from the hassle of digging out documents and sharing them via email. You’ll also end the need to store chunky manuals on your office bookshelf.
Going Paperless requires discipline to set up and willpower to maintain, but whether you’re a solopreneur, microbusiness, or mid-sized team, there’s a way for you take some or all of your business paperless and get that sense of relief that only the cloud can bring.
If you confuse on the Cloud Technology for Tax Prep and Accounting Services than feel free to Contact Us for hiring our Cloud Technology for Tax (T1 & T2) Prep and Accounting Services a Paperless Solution by Accountable Business Services (ABS) ABSPROF.
Contact Details
Accountable Business Services 9905 104 St NW T5K 2G5 Edmonton
Support Call: 1 (888) 556-7864
Fax Number: 780-669-7960
E-Mail: info@absprof.com
Website: https://absprof.com/