Keeping your receipts
Source document management
When it comes to small business compliance, source documents – bills, receipts, checks, or anything substantiating a transaction – are critical.
And collecting and managing source documents can mean a lot of administrative effort and time. Then you have to store all the documents too. Historically, source documents have been paper based, so that means a lot of office space just dedicated to paper document storage!
The good news is that bookkeepers can help small businesses to better manage source documents.
Here are a few frequently asked questions to better understand why and how bookkeepers can help.
Who should manage source documents: the business, or the bookkeeper?
Allocating source document management to your bookkeeper means you can better manage your source documents for compliance-related reasons. This is because your bookkeeper is able to provide more accurate reconciliation. The added bonus is that this can lead to meaningful business insights.
Why are source documents important for bookkeeping?
Source documents are vital for business compliance and audit preparation. Bookkeepers keep up to date with compliance requirements and understand the types of documentation that small businesses are required to keep compliant.
Source documents are also important for improving bookkeeping quality. Having source documents readily available will not only make the reconciliation process faster, easier, and more accurate, it will also help to gather clean data. Again, that data can then be translated into business insights.
What’s the best way to collect and manage source documents?
One of the best ways to collect and manage source documents is to do so digitally. This means implementing a process and using technology to automate and digitise document management.
Using a single system and process for collecting source documents gives you a centralised document storage solution, and all your documents are readily available when you need them.
There are a number of apps and tools that can make it easy for both bookkeepers and business owners to collect and digitise documents. Mose of these will integrates with cloud storage platforms and integrate with cloud accounting packages.
Are digital documents acceptable in the event of an audit?
Yes! Many governments accept digital files as source documents in the event of an audit, including the Australia.
In the event of an audit, having all documents readily available in one place will help to make sure the audit process goes smoothly.
Talk to us about improving your source document management
If you are interested in digitising your source document management, contact us today to discuss the apps and tools available, and how we can help,