Accounting Best Practices, Fifth Edition

17–5. Post Forms on an Intranet Site

Employees frequently come to the accounting department to ask for any of the variety of forms required for changes to their payroll status, such as the IRS’s W-4 form, address changes, cafeteria plan sign-up or change forms, and so on. These constant interruptions interfere with the orderly flow of accounting work, especially when the department runs out of a form and must scramble to replenish its supplies.

This problem is neatly solved by converting all forms to Adobe Acrobat’s PDF format and posting them on a company intranet site for downloading by all employees. By using this approach, no one ever has to approach the accounting staff for the latest copy of a form. Also, employees can download the required form from anywhere, rather than waiting until they are near the accounting location to physically pick one up. Further, the accounting staff can regularly update the PDF forms on the intranet site, so there is no risk of someone using an old and outmoded form.

Converting a regular form to PDF format is simple. First, purchase the Acrobat software from Adobe’s Web site and install it. Then access a form in whatever software package it was originally constructed, and print it to Distiller, which will now appear on the list of printers. There are no other steps—your PDF format is complete! The IRS also uses the PDF format for its forms, which ...