How to Share Accounting Documents
The first practical challenge in outsourcing your accounting is getting the paperwork across. Cloud storage is the simplest answer.
The most important practical challenge a client faces when outsourcing the accounting is how to share the accounting documents.
Use cloud storage
The best way to do this is to share them on the cloud. You can choose from free and paid cloud storage services. Google Drive and Dropbox are the most widely used free services, and both are secure and reliable. If you prefer a paid service, SpringCM is one premium provider that offers more than storage alone, including workflow management.
Google Drive and Dropbox are available across platforms — web, PC, Mac, Android and iOS — giving you several ways to work with them. SpringCM is available on the web with an integration app that provides access from the web, PC, Mac or a mobile app.
You can use any of these services, but we suggest Google Drive for its privacy options and its built-in document scanning, which is genuinely useful in practice.
How Google Drive works for this
Open your browser and go to drive.google.com. If you are already signed in to your Google account it will take you straight to Drive; otherwise it will ask you to sign in.
You can create as many folders as you wish and store files in them. A typical structure has folders for Bank Statements, Clients, Credit Cards, Suppliers, Petty Cash, Statutory and Employees, with the relevant documents in each.
Click New, then Upload file to upload one or more files, or drag and drop them straight into the relevant folder. Google’s search will find a document by the name of a supplier, a credit card or an expense in a few seconds. You can also reach Drive from the app grid in the top right corner of any Google page.
To share your documents with your accountant, select the folder you want to share, click the + icon and type your accountant’s email address. That is all it takes.
On your other devices
You can download Google Drive for PC or Mac from Google. There are also Android and iOS apps, which show the same folders synced from the web, and let you search, scan, upload or create a document from your phone.