paper trail
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- sine0
what does your accountant do? he might keep physical copies of all important documents? stuff like receipts, etc. for tax purposes... you have to be able to show the original documents/files...
interesting question though...
digital/scanned copies of documents are getting more and more acceptable, even when dealing with 'traditional' institutions like banks. you can file tax-returns online, sign and scan important documents. legal documents/contracts still often have to be signed in ink and delivered by hand though, or kept as proof.
- sine0
even though i do all of my banking online, my bank still requires me to go to my branch for certain (security-sensitive) functions, but even then i enter a pin/password, and never have to 'sign' for anything anymore...
- bjladams0
that's along the line of what i'm thinking on sine.
we hardly ever get paper receipts now - even at the coffee shops around, it's all digital, sent via text when i check out. banks send thru everything electronically, and all client notes are in project management software. as far as the accountant, i'm sure he's got a more extensive (printed) collection of us than we do.
we still do have paper, and files on all clients for contracts and other misc items - just noticing that over the last 4 years or so, that while the workload is increasing, the amount of physical paper is significantly decreasing.
- sine0
my opinion is that if it's not something originally in 'paper' format, it doesn't need to be kept in paper/hardcopy.... you're not gonna print out e-mails... i know our financial manager/accounts dep. takes care of all the essentials. once i've sent my scans or hard-copy receipts to them i don't worry about it any further.
- chris_himself_20
Accounting wise I probably have most things covered in paper. So many times I file something on paper I know is saved and backed up multiple times.
- utopian0
what about bookmarks, cache and or the history on your computer?
- bjladams0
haha - sorry - i was thinking more along the lines that these last couple years everything is recorded electronically...
apps for mileage logs, recepts, etc
finance reports are all pdfs sent to the accountant
job notes are all in project management programs and then exported to an hd at the end.my paper trail is almost non-existent
but a good friend of mine works at a place that i did for 5 years - they keep huge amounts of paperwork for everything... quite excessively. boss man says he doesn't trust the longevity of saving things digitally. but he keeps the old paperwork (from 25+ years ago) in a storage unit- and looking thru to find things, it's all covered in mold and eaten by bugs.