Accounting Best Practices, Fifth Edition

Summary

This chapter covered two main categories of best practices for filing. One focused on ways to reduce the amount of filing work needed, on the assumption that some filing of paper documents must always be done. The second cluster of best practices covered how to use a computer system as the logical storage location for information, rather than a filing cabinet. This second alternative is the preferred approach, since it gives everyone with computer access the ability to call up a document without any risk of damaging or losing the information on the digitized document. However, there are a number of steps that a company must take to ensure that information is properly stored on its computer system and that the system is sufficiently operational during working hours to act as a proper substitute for a manual filing system. Thus, the best practices described in this chapter cover the two main filing alternatives—the filing cabinet and the computer system.