The Financial Impact of Losing Business Documents

 

It is very crucial to the survival of a business to safely keep and control its documentation and files. It establishes confidence within your business among potential investors and your clients and helps prove compliance. Using accounting documents as an example, good document management ensures that proper and accurate transactions are posted to the accounting system. Data loss can be caused by different factors. Whether it's from human error, disasters, or hard drive crashes, it could cause a disruption in day-to-day activities. When a big amount of data is lost, it can have bigger implications for the business. 

Important Business Documents You Should Prioritize

 

The number of documents businesses should keep is enormous, but today we want to help you prioritize five documents you should control and store safely.

 

• Invoices and Statements of Accounts (SOA)

Every record of sales and arrangement of accounts in most cases is handled by the firm by itself. These are account information required during tax calculation and for governmental responsibilities.

 

• Delivery Receipts, Proof of Billing, and Transmittals

The measure of expenditure and expenses is determined by a collection of delivery receipts, proof of billing, and transmittals. Being able to track down the allocation of capital resources and bills is important during the legal process and calculation of returns on investment, and ROI.

 

• Contracts

Most of us retain a word document copy of the contracts we issue, along with revisions made to them. This is quite vital especially if a legal issue arises. Basically, despite meticulously guiding these documents paper after paper, file after file, the following occurrences can occur and cause loss of business documents.

 

• Field Work Documents

If you have ever had to go out for research purposes and in the process carry along with sensitive documents related to your work, more often than not, some of the paperwork disappear into thin air. Moving around with a document will not ensure the safety of the material.

 

• Inter-department Documents

When one particular copy of a document is needed by several departments, eventually one person will begin pushing the responsibility of safekeeping from one person to another. This will eventually lead to the loss of the document.

 

Impact of Losing Business Documents

 

• Billing Disputes

At the onset of billing disputes, especially with utilities or vendor companies, it is very difficult to prove that the right figures and processing take longer. Large companies having enough capital investment and backup options for utility supply can survive a phenomenon such as this. For small-scale businesses, it poses a very big problem and affects financial stability.

 

• Loss of Revenue

When sensitive documents such as a Statement of Account (SOA) is missing, it is quite impossible to prove fraud cases or adequately measure and track down full revenue. In the process of retrieving the document, revenue is lost. The inability to retrieve the document will also lead to a loss of revenue.

 

• Inability To Make Sensitive Decisions

It is difficult to improve sales without an account of how previous sales have been carried out. It is also difficult to reinvest profit with this issue on the ground. Sensitive decisions that will lead to growth are unable to be taken and carried out.

 

• Legal Problems

Contracts with financial responsibilities and specific information lost will have a hefty blow on a firm. In most cases, lawyers have a copy of the case file so such shouldn't be a problem. However, in a few scenarios where the law firm has also misplaced a copy of the document, legal proceedings will be quite hard to process.

Once business documents are lost, it will become difficult to track transactions and confirm bills. Calculation of the return on investment will be inaccurate and balancing the company's account is impossible. This helps a huge financial burden and can destroy small-scale businesses.

 

Document management system for data security and compliance

 

Having a cloud-based document management system could benefit both remote and office workers. Aside from the capability to access documents remotely in a structured system, businesses are provided with secure document sharing, be able to comply with document storage policies by gov’t agencies such as AMLC, BIR, FDA, DOH, etc, and easily provide audit documentation, so employees can do audit work and share audit documentation wherever they are.

• Access and share documents across the organization, whether you’re in the office or at home.

• Prevent the loss of data and the accidental deletion of records.

• Find documents quicker and easier with its enhanced search capabilities.

• Convert scanned files/images to text using the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) functionality and indexing capabilities.

• Protect and preserve documents and the integrity and authenticity of the information.

• Prevent unauthorized viewing of documents by allowing document administrators to create permissions based on each user's needs, privileges, and role.

• Track users who viewed, printed, and downloaded files with the Audit Trail feature. 

• Generate insight from business data using the Customizable Reports function.

 

Ready to upgrade your Records Management? Trust The Expert!

 

Archive One has the capability and knowledge your company needs to convert to a paperless office or manage your digital records system and eliminate offsite storage costs. We can help organize your files to be scanned and choose the right document management system so your business can have a high-quality, document imaging system to optimize your information workflow.