LedgersOnline Inc.

Customer Story

How a Virtual Bookkeeping Firm Simplified Their Document Management Process

LedgersOnline is a bookkeeping firm that has been providing comprehensive and customized bookkeeping solutions to businesses of all sizes for over two decades. The rapidly growing firm manages the bookkeeping for multiple North American companies, offering customized and outsourced solutions to maintain compliant, up-to-date financial records and provide clear insights into their finances. In the past, being a virtual bookkeeping agency posed unique challenges that hindered the company's success.

The Challenges

  • As a result of managing many of their clients virtually, LedgersOnline struggled to find an efficient manner to collect or send critical financial documents, receipts, bank statements, or invoices. Physically mailing these documents took too long and posed a significant risk of documents being lost or delayed in transit.
  • Over time as LedgersOnline’s client base grew they began facing challenges in organizing and managing their clients' financial documents securely and efficiently. The traditional paper-based bookkeeping process created storage issues and proved to be time-consuming.
  • The team of bookkeepers spent a significant amount of time manually entering information from paper receipts, invoices, and bank statements into the accounting software, which was both time-consuming and error-prone.
  • There was no central method to organize client documents. Documents and information were scattered across various communication channels, making it difficult to track down information when other bookkeepers needed to access the information and leaving confidential information vulnerable to be seen by unauthorized eyes.
  • A central client portal was what was really required.
Using ScanSnap allowed LedgersOnline, Inc. to easily digitize their client's financial documentation with fast scanning speeds, intelligent image processing, and minimal operator training.

The Solution

To overcome these challenges, LedgersOnline recognized that they needed a transformative and comprehensive solution to address these issues and simplify their operations.

This solution was adopting LedgerDocs, the company’s own cloud-based accounting and bookkeeping software, along with implementing ScanSnap iX series document scanners. Using ScanSnap allowed them to easily digitize their client's financial documentation with fast scanning speeds, intelligent image processing, and minimal operator training. From there, they turned to LedgerDocs to automate their data entry, organize, and store all of their client's financial documents in one central and secure location.

Integrating digital document management into their workflow allowed them to facilitate more efficient communication and collaboration and allowed them to add note mentions and comments directly within the documents. This eliminated the need for time-consuming back-and-forth exchanges over email. Moreover, LedgerDocs provided them with more control over access permissions, ensuring a smooth collaborative process between the bookkeepers and their clients and guaranteeing everyone only has access to the files that are essential and relevant to them.

How the ScanSnap Scanner Integration Works:

  1. LedgersOnline installed ScanSnap Home software on each of their user’s computers and then connected ScanSnap to complete the scanner installation.
  2. They then configured a ScanSnap Cloud profile on each system to assign and connect it to their LedgerDocs account.
  3. Afterwards, they designated the specific company/folder in LedgerDocs to which their scans would be automatically uploaded.
  4. After the profiles are created, each ScanSnap scanner can be connected directly to the network without the requirement to connect and scan to a PC first. Instead, the documents can go directly to ScanSnap Cloud for processing and then seamlessly transferred to LedgerDocs.
  5. The accountants can now start scanning documents into their designated LedgerDocs locations by simply loading a document into their ScanSnap and pressing the scan button. The documents are automatically converted into PDFs after being intelligently processed to detect the size, color mode, skew correction, blank page removal and more before being delivered to the designated LedgerDocs destination.
  6. Once the documents were uploaded to LedgerDocs, the bookkeepers used LedgerDocs to help them categorize, process and organize the documents properly.

Choosing the Right Scanner

Selecting the right scanner was a critical decision for LedgersOnline to ensure the success of the ScanSnap Integration. Their criteria were clear: the scanner had to be reliable, efficient, and seamlessly compatible with LedgerDocs. In the end, LedgersOnline made the savvy choice of using a combination of ScanSnap iX1600 and ScanSnap iX1300 scanners to seamlessly integrate with the workflows of their bookkeepers and clients.

The Perfect Pick for their Team:

The bookkeeping team at LedgerDocs, who often work from home or the office while managing various clients and handling a diverse array of documents, found the ScanSnap iX1600 to be an excellent fit. Its high-speed scanning capabilities allowed these bookkeepers to quickly and efficiently digitize numerous documents, converting them to their preferred file types, including searchable PDFs, JPEGs, and editable Word Documents. They were then able to upload these documents onto LedgerDocs seamlessly.

The Perfect Pick for Their Clients:

LedgersOnline serves a diverse range of clients, each with unique requirements. The ScanSnap iX1300, distinguished by its well-balanced features, stood out as a cost-effective and space-efficient solution that would meet the needs of the majority of LedgersOnline's clientele. Its compact and portable design made it perfect for any environment from which these business owners worked, and it was incredibly versatile, allowing them to scan a variety of different document types, from plastic cards and receipts to regular documents. It was capable of scanning and digitizing anything they needed to share with their bookkeeper.

Recommended Products

The Results

Automated Data Entry

By using the LedgerDocs OCR tool they were able to automatically extract key financial data from the scanned documents and automatically upload this information into accounting software such as Quickbooks® Online, eliminating the manual data entry process and saving the bookkeepers and the clients valuable time.

Document Management

Digitizing documents and storing them in one central location helped to improve accessibility, enabling authorized team members to find and retrieve information quickly and effortlessly. The cloud-based platform paired with the simple-to-use scanner allowed for the easy maintenance of digitizing documents, allowing the bookkeeper to access and store this information without having to keep original physical copies. This digital filing system eliminated the need for a filing cabinet while allowing the bookkeepers' clients to remain compliant.

Collaboration

The collaboration features within LedgerDocs allowed the team to work together more effectively - sharing insights right at the document level through notes and mentions, resolving any questions, or collecting any missing documents or information promptly using the notifications or document request features.

Accuracy and Compliance

The simplified workflow reduced the likelihood of human errors in data entry. This allowed them to keep more accurate records and improved the quality of the records and compliance with financial reporting requirements.

Improved Document Security

All of the documents scanned and uploaded by the bookkeepers onto LedgerDocs were encrypted to safeguard documents from any unauthorized access. The bookkeepers were also able to set up specific access permissions and controlled sharing options to protect sensitive data to prevent any unauthorized access to confidential client information.

The bookkeeping team at LedgerDocs, who often work from home or the office while managing various clients and handling a diverse array of documents, found the ScanSnap iX1600 to be an excellent fit.

Benefits

By integrating ScanSnap with LedgerDocs, LedgersOnline was able to successfully transform its bookkeeping process into a seamless, efficient, and well-organized workflow. By eliminating manual data entry and centralizing their clients' financial documents in LedgerDocs, they were able to increase productivity, eliminate the need for physical document storage, and improve their clients' data security. As a result, the firm was able to offer higher-quality services, gain a competitive edge in the market, and foster long-lasting client relationships.

Ready to simplify your document management like LedgersOnline did? Discover how LedgerDocs paired with the ScanSnap Integration can revolutionize your workflow.

Book a demo

Note: Information and external links are provided for your convenience and for educational purposes only. PFU America, Inc. makes no representations about the contents, features, or specifications on such third-party sites, software, and/or offerings (collectively “Third-Party Offerings”) and shall not be responsible for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of such Third-Party Offerings.