Document Management Isn’t Just for Accountants

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE FOR QUICKBOOKS
For QuickBooks users, there are several products in the market. Some of the
products focus more on automation of the scanning and organizing process, and
some go deeper into the documents and apply business rules to initiate a business
process. For example, Bill.com takes scanned images of vendor invoices and then
provides a complete online Accounts Payable system around those invoices. But
products like CNG-Books, SourceLink and PaperSave focus more on scanning, organizing
and retrieving documents, and attaching them to accounting transactions.

All of the products listed here provide fairly tight integration with QuickBooks.
For example, each (except for Bill.com) provides the user with a prompt to scan
and/or attach an existing document to a transaction or list item right when
you save a transaction in QuickBooks. With Bill.com, all data entry is done
within the Bill.com online application, which is then synchronized automatically
with QuickBooks so you never have to enter bills into QuickBooks.

Here is an overview of some of the Document Management products you and your
clients should consider:

INTUIT QUICKBOOKS DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT (For QB 2010 and beyond)
www.quickbooks.com

The QuickBooks Document Management service lets you attach documents (scanned
images or any other document) to your QuickBooks lists and transactions. The
documents are uploaded to an Intuit server and synchronized with QuickBooks
transactions.

This new Document Management service works with QuickBooks 2010 and QuickBooks
Enterprise 10 and above. Since it’s an online service, you sign up separately
for the service and pay fees (after a free trial period) depending on the amount
of storage you need. The first 100MB of storage is free, and then the charges
are $4.95/month for up to 500MB, $14.95 for up to 1GB, and $29.95 for up to
5GB.

This new feature of QuickBooks 2010 is integrated into QuickBooks throughout
the product via the Attach button that appears on transactions.

You can attach documents in three ways. First, you can attach documents by
selecting a local document from your hard disk; second, by scanning a paper
document; or by attaching a document from the Online Document Inbox. The Inbox
is a place where documents were uploaded previously, but not specifically attached
to a transaction or list item.

The QuickBooks Document Management service from Intuit is a great value for
clients with simple document management needs, and those who are interested
in documents connected to QuickBooks transactions or lists.

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SMARTVAULT
www.smartvault.com

SmartVault took a similar approach to attaching documents to QuickBooks transactions,
but they’ve filled out the space more completely. SmartVault has been
in the market for three years, compared to Intuit’s very recent release
of its document management service, and this has given SmartVault many advantages.

SmartVault is an online service, complemented by the SmartVault “Toolbar”
that runs on the side of QuickBooks. This toolbar is the key differentiation
that SmartVault’s product gives to the user. By having the simple, consistent,
easy (no, obvious!) toolbar, the user immediately knows what the product does,
how to use it, and when there are documents already attached to the current
list and/or transaction.

With its latest release (version 3), SmartVault has expanded its service outside
of the QuickBooks user base and has significantly enhanced the product by allowing
you to create a folder and subfolder structure outside of QuickBooks. With this
new approach, you can now store all your files securely online, and you can
create new folders or just map existing Windows folders directly to SmartVault.

A key feature that accountants will like is that you can invite people to
securely share and access documents and folders online. Think about how accountants
and clients need access to the same data in order to work efficiently. We’ve
been getting shared data on the Internet for a while now, with products like
QuickBooks Online, but now SmartVault is adding shared access to the same document
management system.

SmartVault is well on the way to delivering on the concept of a single, online
document management solution for all business documents plus providing collaboration
for accountants and their clients. And it doesn’t matter whether the documents
are associated with QuickBooks transactions, with other application data, or
not associated with any particular application. By providing the toolbar and
integration with the Windows explorer, SmartVault is well positioned to become
the common document management solution people will use for all documents, regardless
of which applications they use.

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PAPERSAVE
www.papersave.com

PaperSave is another impressive product for QuickBooks document management.
It doesn’t have the nice “in-your-face” visual interface features
that you get with SmartVault or with QuickBooks Document Management service,
but it is very nicely integrated into QuickBooks and provides great features
for a reasonable price ($199 single-user, $499 for three users, and $699 for
five users).

A key feature of PaperSave is that in addition to attaching documents to transactions
or list items while you’re in QuickBooks, you can also attach Microsoft
Office documents to QuickBooks data even when you’re NOT inside the QuickBooks
application. For example, you can store emails or Word or Excel documents to
QuickBooks data while you’re using Word, Excel, Outlook or even the Windows
explorer.

PaperSave is a LAN-based product, so all of the documents are stored within
a SQL Server database on-premise as opposed to uploading the documents to a
database in the cloud like you do with SmartVault, QuickBooks Document Management
or Bill.com.

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CABINET NG
www.cabinetng.com

Cabinet NG takes the document management segment way beyond just attaching
documents or images to accounting transactions. Along with the broader functionality
is a higher price (typical configurations run several thousands of dollars),
but if you’re looking for a document management system that covers the
full range of document storage needs, document automation, and workflow, this
is probably the product you need.

The Cabinet NG solution starts with the core product, CNG-SAFE (Shared Access
Filing Environment). This product is a LAN-based, SQL Server product that stores,
organizes and provides management of virtually any document. It uses a client/server
architecture and provides several ways to add metadata to stored documents so
you can view, check out, search, retrieve, and even add workflows to any of
the stored documents. For example, a document may need to be routed through
several staff members as it is processed. This product is well-suited for the
growing company with broader needs for storing, managing and adding workflow
processes to documents.

A separate application, CNG-Books is the company’s integrated solution
for QuickBooks. CNG-Books streamlines QuickBooks data entry and document filing
into one complete electronic process. Vendor bills, customer payments and credit
card statements are brought into CNG-Books as scanned or faxed images. Then,
as the user views the image, CNG-Books provides a simple data-entry screen that
replaces the need to enter transactions in QuickBooks. As you fill out the data
in CNG-Books, you only enter the transaction’s unique data while the rest
is captured from the QuickBooks file and presented in pull-down menus. As you
save each transaction, it is entered in QuickBooks and the image is filed.

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SOURCELINK
www.personable.com

SourceLink is one of the first document management add-ons to QuickBooks.
As such, it has some of the most complete features for scanning, storing and
retrieving documents attached to QuickBooks data. It is a LAN-based product,
and it links and retrieves files stored in the native Windows file system as
opposed to a web-based database or a proprietary filing system.

The product is also one of the least expensive solutions. The standard version
pricing is $229 for a single user, $729 for five users, and $1,229 for 10 users.
The 2010 version adds a toolbar similar to the SmartVault product, which floats
to the side of QuickBooks, allowing users to see when documents are attached
to transactions as they appear in QuickBooks.

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FORMCLIQ
www.formcliq.com

FormCliQ solves a very specific problem in the document management area. The
goal of this product is to automate data entry into QuickBooks by scanning documents
in, recognize the text on the forms using OCR technology, and then populate
QuickBooks transactions, all without the need for human data entry. When I first
heard about this product, I said it was impossible; but after seeing it work,
I’m pretty impressed. OCR technology will never give 100 percent accuracy,
but if you have high-volume, consistent forms (vendor bills for example), and
you want to automate the data entry of those transactions into QuickBooks, this
product may be just the product you need.

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BILL.COM
www.bill.com

Bill.com is not specifically a document management product, but since it automates
so many of the business processes that involve paper documents, we’re
including it here.

For about $25/month, Bill.com completely automates the bill management and
online bill payment processes. It provides a complete system, integrated with
QuickBooks, that spans from receiving invoices from vendors (paper or electronic),
to entering the payable transactions, to routing bills to management for approvals,
to scheduling online bill payments. And of course, since it’s based on
paperless documents, it also provides the same document management feature of
attaching documents to QuickBooks transactions.

Since Bill.com is a SaaS application, all of the documents it touches remain
in an online database, securely stored in the cloud.