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No matter how big or small your organization is, audits can be time-consuming and require a lot of preparation and work. There are also many different types of audits, depending on your industry. Overall, organizations are looking for that key solution to make the auditing process more manageable. We all wish there was a solution that just did our audits for us, but unfortunately there isn’t a “key solution” that will do everything for you. However, a document management system (DMS) has the features and capabilities to make your audit process smooth and easy.
A DMS provides you with all of the software and hardware required to ensure that you maintain control over all your documents, scanned images, and files created on a computer—like spreadsheets, word processing documents, and graphics. In addition, each DMS has features that can allow you to streamline your document’s workflows, making it easier to retrieve documents and more. These features have the advantage of making your audit process more efficient. Through this blog, we will be diving into how a document management system can improve your audit process so that you can take away the stress of audits.
Quick Document Access
Preparing for an audit means you have to dig up a lot of documents, some you may not have used in months. The ability to access these documents quickly is what can make or break your audit. The issue we see with most organizations is that their documents are scattered across the company, so when audit time comes around, they are running around trying to locate them. Not only does this take away valuable time from your employees, but it can also hinder your audit. Maybe your auditor is missing a document and you have to find it quickly– that is where a DMS comes in. A well-designed DMS will be able to centralize your documents all in one place, making it easy to know where everything is. Need a specific invoice for your audit? No problem! A DMS can set certain search parameters based on how you want to look up your documents. This makes accessing documents seamless and efficient, which will make your audit process easier for you and your employees.
Audit Trail & History
The whole point of an audit is to show complete transparency into your operations to ensure your organization is staying compliant. To do that, they may ask to see how you are handling documents from beginning to end: who has access to the documents, edits made, the archival of documents, etc. Without any system in place, gathering this information will be tedious and time-consuming. You may not even be able to get this information which can lead to an incomplete audit, and you will have to go through the entire audit again.
Most DMS have automatic revision control, which basically captures each document revision with an entire audit trail. A DMS also allows you to specify custom permission levels to address the issues of document misplacement, overwriting, deletion, and alteration. That way, you can gather all the information in one report and have complete transparency with your auditor, saving you and your auditor all the stress and time needed to collect this information.
Security Compliance Control
Depending on the type of audit, a major thing auditors are looking for is ensuring information security. They want to verify that all records or documents that need to be secure have appropriate access controls. Paper-based documents are difficult to secure due to the many irreversible complications that could occur. A DMS provides you a wide range of security to help prevent data breaches and prepare you to be audit-ready. For an extra level of security, most DMS provide multiple levels of security so you have full control over document access and what can be done with them. For example, the accounting department should only see client banking information; with a DMS, you can show your auditor who has access and ensure that those documents are secure.
Workflow Transparency
Processes within your company need to be consistent, but you also need to make sure you are following the proper procedures. Depending on your industry, there may be certain procedures that you must follow to stay compliant. When an auditor comes around, they will want to fully understand these procedures and how your documents flow through them. Documenting that process can take weeks if you don’t have it already documented somewhere. With automatic workflows within a DMS, you can automate all the steps within specific procedures. That way, the auditor can see the lifecycle of some of your documents from beginning to end to ensure you are following document management best practices and are compliant.
Questions?
We all know that the auditing process is not easy, but you can transform your preparation and allow for a less stressful audit with a DMS. No more running around the office or trying to track down documents for days. With the many features and capabilities a DMS has to offer, not only will your auditing process improve but your overall document management as well. Want to know what other ways a DMS can help your organization? Contact us today!
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