Thinking of Buying A Document Management System? Look In-house First – You May Already Have One
By Joseph Menchaca, CPA
Do today’s small to medium size firms really need a full-fledged document management system, or can they use features already built into their existing software to meet their document management needs?
We all need to keep track of the documents that are produced and received by our organizations. The reasons can be as simple as not having to write the same types of proposals or reports over again to meeting recurring governmental reporting requirements.
Although document management software assists us in these efforts, it can be an expensive investment and complicated to license, often requiring database software not currently in-house, extensive training and intricate hardware upgrades. Even the more “inexpensive” web-based document management services still require an Internet connection, and generally charge on an individual user basis - that can add up. In addition, your documents are then stored on someone else’s server, a condition that doesn’t sit well with most organizations.
Many small to medium size organizations use Microsoft® server software, Microsoft Windows 2000® or XP Professional® as their operating system, and Microsoft Office® for their productivity software. Surprisingly, these firms may already have all the capabilities they need to meet their document management needs. Plus, by adding relatively inexpensive search tools such as Google Mini® and free web sharing software from Microsoft called SharePoint Services®, they can greatly extend their document management options.
For our discussion, document management is defined as the ability to classify, store, retrieve and internally/externally track generated documents we care about.
What do we care about?
Determining what “we care about” is the first step that an organization needs to complete before implementing any type of document management protocol. The best place to begin is to appoint someone on your staff as the designated “Chief Documents Officer,” (CDO) whose sole responsibility is to meet all present and future document management requirements. This person should be an organized, administrative member that is completely familiar with both billable and non-billable operations. If your firm has substantial document management requirements, the position should be full time. However, your CDO could even work by organizational unit if there are a wide variety of documentation requirements between units. Your Chief Documents Officer must be given formal responsibility for maintaining the list of documents you care about, for how long you should care about them and the staff that cares about each particular item.
The documents you care about can be discovered by:
- Examining filings with government agencies and related retention requirements
- Reviewing proposals, letter of understandings and client reports to identify those submitted on a regular basis
- Reviewing active and in-active contracts to identify common reporting requirements
- Interviewing the firm’s staff to identify types of documents they spend their time searching for and need to regularly access, copy and reproduce
- Preparing a document flow chart depicting who routinely accesses particular documents and when.
Your CDO should also maintain and update the list of keywords and phrases related to documents so that you can easily identify, group, and search for them.
Next Step: Classify
Now that you have identified what you care about, have your CDO classify or group your documents together. Oftentimes, classifying or grouping is by the following criteria:
- Organization
- Types of clients or engagements
- Staff titles, such as client executive, reviewer, etc.
- Government agencies
- Contract types
- Document types.
A document is not necessarily required to be classified into only one group. It can be found in as many groups as appropriate.
Organizing your documents may raise additional questions: What do I do with hard copy documents already sent to me? What about those documents completed on a hard copy forms? How do I electronically store these with my other computer generated documents?
The answers can all be found in your Microsoft Office software. Simply click on Start, then All Programs on your desktop and then go to Microsoft Office. Under Microsoft Office Tools, you will see Microsoft Office Document Scanning and Microsoft Office Document Imaging. The document scanning software allows you to capture hard copy documents and save them on your computer, while the document imaging software let’s you manipulate (i.e. annotate, insert images, pages, etc., and export the scanned document’s content into other Microsoft Office applications, such as Word) the scanned document.
Store It
Now that you have classified or grouped your documents, they must be stored efficiently so that staff knows where to find them and where to store them once they have been generated or modified. Your documents should be stored in a way that allows certain staff members authorized access to necessary documents.
The answer to meeting these requirements may be found in your
Windows Server, Windows 2000 or Windows XP operating system software. Since you are in a workgroup environment, you (or an outside consultant) had to establish “User Groups” for granting staff privileges for access rights.
You can take advantage of “User Groups” to facilitate the storing and access of your documents. Your Chief Documents Officer can cross walk your document classifications to your Windows operating system groups and add new groups as necessary to meet your changing needs. You can then assign users to these groups. Your CDO can then establish folders and subfolders for storing the documents by the various classifications. For example, you can set up folders by client and then subfolders for tax documents, financial statements, financial planning, etc. Each document is stored to its particular folder and you use Windows security features associated with each folder to control which user or group of users can store or retrieve documents.
Retrieve It
Now that your documents are classified, stored and secured, you need to be able to easily retrieve them. If the user knows which folder stores what kind of document, then they can go there to retrieve the document they need. However, if they don’t know the exact document folder, they need to be able to use key words or phrases to locate that document. Microsoft Office already provides a powerful search capability for finding documents. This searching feature is found under File, File Search on any Office application menu. You can type in key words and retrieve any type of Office or annotated scanned document.
You can expand Office’s search capabilities by having users complete the requested information in the Summary tab, under File,Properties on the Menu bar. This allows searches on words entered in the Summary tab such as title, author, subject, etc. Much of the Summary information can be automatically generated for Word documents by clicking on Auto Summarize under the Tools menu item. You can make retrieving even more powerful by using the custom features also available on the Properties tab. This does require your users to assign your custom items to the document when they first save the document.
Those organizations that need to search across non-Office Applications, internal or external web sites, or do not want to bother classifying and storing documents as outlined above, can use an inexpensive product such as Google Mini®. Google Mini is loaded on to your server and works just like the Google search tool used for the Internet. Google Mini indexes the documents on your server and then allows you to retrieve documents that have the words you searched on. You don’t have to be in a Microsoft application to search for documents. Google Mini is relatively easy to set up, but does come with a licensing fee based on the number of indexed documents.
Managing and Tracking
Once a document is retrieved, you need to know whether it is being worked on, and what revisions have occurred. Microsoft Office provides collaboration tools and the ability to track changes by staff persons. Microsoft Outlook allows you to route documents throughout your organization for review and approval. You can learn more about these capabilities through the Help files associated with any Office application.
There is also a powerful software capability you can add (at no cost) to greatly expand your organization’s collaboration and document sharing capabilities. If you are using Microsoft Server 2003, this software is known as Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) ® and it can be downloaded from the Microsoft Corporation web site (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads).
WSS allows an organization to set up a web site where staff can share documents, track revisions to documents and perform other collaboration activities such as holding discussion groups, track issues associated with clients or engagements, maintain common contact information and even assign tasks related to a particular engagement.
Setting up a web site is relatively simple. You can have the site for your entire organization, separate organizational units or even by client or engagement. You can then take a client or engagement web site one step further by granting your clients’ access to a WSS web site related to them. In this case, your clients can now go to that site to review documents and provide comments or revisions at their leisure.
The amount of collaboration and informational capabilities you can provide with WSS is almost limitless and is certainly worth further investigation.
Document management has become a critical challenge for CPA and accounting firms due to the tremendous amount of paperwork generated by their tax, audit and financial services operations. Whether you choose to invest in a stand-alone document management system or simply maximize the features and capabilities you already have with existing software, today’s firms are quickly moving toward electronic or paperless document management processes.
About Author:
Joseph Menchaca, CPA is president of EmeraldKey Technologies, Inc., a Washington-based company that provides Envision Accounting Software for small and mid-sized businesses. Menchaca has more than 25 years of experience in both the professional services and software industries. Starting his professional services career at Ernst & Young (E&Y), he assisted in the development and implementation of accounting and financial systems for a wide variety of organizations. Recruited by Microsoft Corporation to start Microsoft Consulting Services, he headed the consulting organizations for their Southeast and Central regions. He was then transferred to Microsoft headquarters to be the General Manager in charge of support services for consultants and systems engineers. Menchaca can be reached at 425-882-1290 or joem@envisionaccounting.com
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