How does your firm exchange important financial documents with clients? Do clients send earnings statements and tax documents by regular mail, or perhaps as email attachments? In the event of an audit, how are PBC (prepared by client) supporting documents delivered? Finally, how does your firm exchange documents requiring client signature?
Documents exchanged between clients and CPA firms contain highly sensitive PII (personally identifiable information) such as name, address, Social Security numbers, and financial account numbers. In the wrong hands could leave your firm or client organizations vulnerable to identity theft or financial fraud. If your firm is still relying on the exchange of paper documents, faxing, or email attachments to exchange client documents, it may be time to consider a more secure, digital method – a web based portal.
Consider the most common methods of document sharing and the benefits of trading these old methods for a secure file-sharing portal designed specifically for accounting firms.
Traditional Mail, Paper Documents
Delivery of paper by traditional postal delivery will add two or more days to delivery time, and carries the risk of mail theft or loss. A packet of 50 pages, on standard stock paper, would cost $2.50 to print and about $5.00 to mail. Since many organizations retain documents in digital form, the paper trail approach incurs time and cost of digitizing content on either end, as both organizations scan and store the content.
FAX
Fax offers the advantages of rapid delivery, and of being binding for legal purposes. Over 21 percent of respondents to a recent AFOT (Accounting Firm Operations and Technology) survey reported that they use fax to transmit documents.
Does your firm still use FAX to transmit documents? Consider the costs - the fax machine itself, plus paper, ink and phone line. Ink cartridges for low end fax machines can cost $20 or more per 150 sheets. A laser fax machine toner cartridge may cost $70-120.
Beyond the costs of fax service and supplies, fax poses security issues. In many companies fax machines are shared by multiple departments, and physically sit in a communal area. This leaves any faxed content vulnerable to accidental or purposeful access by unauthorized individuals. Scams sent via fax lines from imposters pretending to be the IRS or a viable business partner are a nuisance and do pose security risks.
Email: Not as Safe as Many Believe
Email is ubiquitous, easy to use, and the process is entirely digital. In the 2017 AFOT survey, 70 percent of accountants surveyed said that their firms deliver some or all tax returns to clients via email.
Despite having identified security as a top concern, these firms continue to put themselves and their clients at risk by emailing tax returns.
File Sharing Sites
A number of cloud-based file sharing options are available. Dropbox, ShareFile and Google Drive are common examples. These can be a more secure and a convenient alternative to email. When considering moving from email to a file-sharing site, consider whether it’s the best solution for accounting firm operations. While secure file-sharing sites are a leap ahead of email in terms of securely sharing documents, their objective is to gain general market use across many industry segments. As a result these solutions may be less customizable, and may not integrate well with CRM, document management or other systems in use by accounting firms. A lack of integration capability will incur more manual steps (download, copy, save documents to the target location) by users.
Accounting Firm Portals
Accounting firm portals are similar to file-sharing services, in that they rely on internet technologies, and allow secure transmission of documents between firms and clients. A portal designed specifically for accounting firms stands out, with several additional advantages over standard file sharing applications:
Access control: Access control is better in that it inherits permissions from that application. When setup the same way, file sharing applications and portal applications have similar access control.
- Secure transmission during upload/download: look for 256 bit SSL encryption for best security.
- Custom branding with your firm’s identity. Some portals offer this at no additional cost. This is an affordable way to create a sense of community with your clients. PBC (provided by client) checklists tailor the system for use by accounting firms, and offer a positive client experience.
- Integration with document management files and binders improves productivity. An integrated portal is more intuitive and there are synergies from each application on the other such as: search, drag and drop, user interface familiarity (no learning curve), setting up purge/access is similar as the document management application.
- eSignature integration: since signature management is so often required in document exchanges with accounting clients, look for the ability to easily handle digital signatures within the portal.
- Mobile access: If accountants and staff work on the go, they’ll appreciate full access to client files from their tablet or phone.
- Cost control: Look for an accounting portal priced at a monthly rate per user, without storage or volume based fees.
Click, Connect and Comply
A secure portal site, branded with your firm name, is an optimal way to delight clients by offering 24 hour secured access to files and documents. While enhancing client satisfaction, your firm will also benefit from improved efficiency, productivity, and information governance.
Doc.It has provided this diagnostic worksheet as the first step to understanding general areas where risk can be mitigated. The first step to resolving security risks is to identify processes and methodology that risk data security. Answering “YES” to any of the following statements identifies areas to address.
Doc.It, a document management, workflow and portal solution, is presenting an educational webinar with Insightful Accountant on June 25, 2019 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Click here to learn more or register for Optimizing Workflow and Document Management Efficiency.
Author Bio: Don Emery, CPA, CA, is director of client solutions for Doc.It Inc. Doc.It provides document management and workflow software designed specifically for accounting firms. Emery leads the North America business development team and provides implementation consulting services, assisting firms with strategy, document management, workflow efficiency, retention and compliance.