08.09.2025
Finally looking to go digital with your office admin? Automating administrative processes saves time and reduces stress for SMEs, but also means they can keep track of their finances at all times, thanks to real-time evaluations. How to get started.
It’s easy to start with invoices when it comes to digitization. Our savings calculator shows how much you can save by switching to digital invoices.
Creating invoices, checking receipt of payment, paying bills and keeping accounts: for many SMEs, these administrative processes are a necessary evil that consume precious time. Time that could be better spent on their core business. They are nonetheless key processes, as a sound financial basis is vital to the survival of every company. Any business seeking to eliminate superfluous procedures, increase their flexibility and bring an end to the war on paper should digitize their office environment step by step.
Receipts can be quickly forgotten or lost. Or they pile up, because you don’t get around to entering them or sending them to your fiduciary. Once these tedious tasks have finally been completed, all the documents then have to be filed again. Some companies still use folders, which take up a lot of time and space, while others scan in their receipts. There are some excellent tools available today which can reduce the workload significantly. For example, receipts can be photographed immediately and uploaded or sent. Important: if original copies are not retained, the receipt must be clearly readable and easy to find again.
Tip: with the PaperCut app, receipts can be photographed with ease and uploaded to the accounting portal of your choice.
Office work can be completed quickly and easily with online solutions. A one-off import of customer and product data is generally enough – then quotations, order confirmations, delivery notes and invoices can be created and managed online: for example, quotations can be converted into invoices in no time at all after order completion. If invoices are also integrated, payments can be settled automatically, which saves time. If you use a browser-based platform, you not only have control over accounts receivable and payable management anytime and anywhere, but also don’t need installation or maintenance.
If all relevant processes – such as receipts, invoices and payments – are automated, accounting can also be digitized. A wide range of accounting tools are available, and these also make life easier for SMEs in particular. Whether simple payroll processes or more comprehensive financial accounting with VAT invoicing, batch entries or foreign currencies: the perfect solution meets the relevant requirements and ideally enables double entry – even if this is not mandatory. Entry is no more complex, but does provide valuable information for future budget planning, as data is entered on two different accounts.
Companies looking to switch to a paperless office now should not simply launch into digitization. Detailed planning is vitally important to ensure a smooth transition. Here are the most important steps:
Determine which processes in your accounting are particularly inefficient, and, in turn, unproductive. By identifying and digitizing these processes, you will free up more time to focus on your core tasks.
Calculate how much you can save by digitizing a process. Full costing is a good way to do this. Perhaps you want to find out, for example, whether switching to digital invoicing processes is worthwhile for your company. Our calculator makes this easy.
Define which steps in the digitization process you want to implement by when and create a rough schedule of things that need to be done to ensure that the changeover to the new tool is not delayed unnecessarily. Also factor in a test period that allows you to check whether everything is working properly and as intended.
Determine the needs you want the new tool to cover and carefully compare the solutions available on the market. For example, there are already accounting tool solutions that use AI to enter accounting records.
If a new tool needs to be compatible with existing systems, always consider this when choosing the tool.
SMEs that have outsourced some or all their accounting should act early to determine whether their collaboration with their external accountants will continue to run smoothly after the changeover and that the accountants can work with the new tool. You can read more about this in the Blog “Outsource accounting or do it yourself?”.
