Generally speaking, all businesses have the potential to be audited at some point and going through an audit can be an extremely time consuming and stressful process if you don’t have all of your ducks in a row. Auditors can require you to show a great deal of data and documentation and if that information isn’t readily available and organized, or if they happen to be stored incorrectly or missing, you could be at risk of being noncompliant and your business could face penalties.
For example, if you’re in the business of food or drug manufacturing, it is highly likely that the FDA will want to review your documentation, such as quality records or device history records, from time to time. If they came today, how long would it take you to find the correct documents and also show that they have been stored in a compliant manner. Or, say your auto dealership is going through a warranty audit. The manufacturers are going to want to see all the repair orders proving that you fixed X amount of vehicles for a certain recall. Would you be able to find them quickly enough to not disturb the dealership’s daily operations?
Digitizing your documents and managing them in a document management system, like Recordsforce Cloud, is a surefire way to make sure your processes are up to industry standards, but also ensures that your audits go off without a hitch. Here are some ways that a document management system will improve your auditing process:
- 100% search accuracy – Never have a missing file
All of your documents would be stored in one central location instead of in all the different filing cabinets and desk drawers. When your documents are digitized, made searchable and stored in the cloud, there is no need to cut out preparation time for an audit because there is already an audit trail on every document.
- Auditors will see that you’ve invested in a system way to manage your audit docs
It makes everyone’s lives easier during an audit when you’ve invested in a system that practically audits itself. Auditors can easily see your document processes, and who has access to or ability to change your organization’s documents.
- Easily organize files by date, vendor, customer, you name it, in seconds not days
Again, save time searching through all of your documents by being able to find what you need with a simple search. You are in control of how the documents are sorted, and can do so with the click of a button rather than needing to manually shuffle documents around.
- Give auditors digital access to only the records they’ve requested
Keep all of your confidential and sensitive information and documents secure. You put yourself at a much lower risk if auditors have eyes on strictly the documents they requested.
- More confidence during audits scares auditors away
Let’s call it bug spray for auditors. If auditors can already see that you have a system in place to organize your documents and stored properly, they know they are less likely to find any issues or concerns with your document process.
- Not to mention it makes your life easier everyday
The benefits of digitizing your documents and managing them in a document management software, like Recordsforce Cloud, are endless. From disaster recovery to business continuity. You get secure and instant access from anywhere whenever you need it.
In the end, digitizing your documents and implementing a document management system makes it easy to prepare and go through an audit. You simply set up access to the requested documents and then have peace of mind that your business greatly reduced the risk of failing an audit. There is no need to waste time to prepare for your audit and you can avoid the interruption of your day-to-day operations.