Improve Audit Processes With These Digital Form Features

Audit season is here, is your business ready?

Audits are just another part of running a business - though they’re seldom the most pleasant. Whether it’s an audit from a government or industry authority, or just your own internal team conducting a process audit, they can be intimidating. But thankfully they don’t have to stall your business or take up excessive amounts of your time. If you’re ready to move away from paper and embrace digital forms, then you’re in for a much more pleasant audit experience. Here are some best practices to ensure your digital forms keep your entire business audit-ready at all times.

Start With Clean Records

If you’ve ever heard the phrase “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, record-keeping is no exception. Making a plan to keep your records clean, easy to read, and accurate is going to pay off in any audit situation. Even filing your regular business and tax paperwork can be hassle-free. With digital forms, you already know the benefit of avoiding handwritten notes and numbers—and if you’re not yet using digital forms, then let that be your first selling point.

While keeping legible records is key to audit prep, you want to make sure that you’re also tracking the right data and information. When setting up your digital forms, make sure you’re covering all the bases you need to, not just for your industry, but also for your business. There are likely forms and agreements in your business that are industry standard, and you’ll need your clients to fill those out. But are you tracking other important information about your clients? This can be details like their seasonal business needs if you’re a consultant, keeping track of potential referral opportunities to expand your business, or even tracking additional information about your own business.

For example, if you’re tracking mileage to record and apply appropriate deductions for tax season, are you also tracking the vehicle the mileage was logged on? Keeping track of the total mileage on your fleet can ensure you stay on top of maintenance visits and routine safety checks. When logging mileage in a digital forms solution, you can route this information anywhere you need it, such as a spreadsheet configured with a calculation for total miles driven. This can help you identify when it’s time for an oil or filter change for any given vehicle, as well as keep a running log of overall vehicle status in case there are any unaccounted-for damages.

Document the Details

In addition to having clean records, it helps to have more information than you think you’ll need—especially in the case of an outside audit. You can use other platforms to track your expenses, digital accounting software to give you the flexibility of direct deposits, and even digital inventory tracking platforms to ensure you know exactly what you need from your next vendor order. When looking for these supplementary systems, make sure you find a provider that offers direct integrations with your digital forms solution to keep all your data communications automated. Top-tier providers may not offer direct integrations with every system, but they will have an open API that will allow your IT team to build a direct line of communication between the platforms.

While things like expenses, banking systems, and inventory management may be top of mind, don’t let the supplemental information slip through your fingers. Configure your digital forms to track those additional details, which may come in handy in the case of an unexpected audit. This can include information like pictures, time and date stamps, and even additional spreadsheets or reference notes from client emails. If your digital forms provider also offers mobile forms, you can expand that reach to include GPS details for further insight into where your employees were when filling out their forms.

Keep All Your Data Synchronized in One Place

There’s nothing worse than a last-minute rush to find all the documents pertaining to your audit - and the average auditor isn’t known for overwhelming patience. With a digital forms solution, you can rest assured that all your data is exactly where you need it. The best platforms will sync your documents and files directly into your cloud storage platform, or even email copies to third parties and outside stakeholders for review. This can be especially useful for things like timesheet templates when you need your bookkeeper to pull the data directly into your accounting system, but also need a record stored for HR and audits.

One key digital form feature that paper forms can’t match is the built-in search functionality. By having the ability to search through, or even filter, completed forms, you can always find the information you need quickly and efficiently. Set up custom filters ahead of time to beat the stress of an audit or send your forms to sorted and structured cloud storage folders to make finding your original forms a breeze.

One of the best ways to equip your internal audit team is by reporting on the data you’ve captured from your digital forms. But reports are often going to vary depending on your use case and business needs. You can utilize the native reporting within your digital forms solution to gather this information, or if you have more powerful reporting and analysis built out in a platform such as Power BI, you can export your form data directly to it for fast, detailed analysis and reporting at your fingertips.

Keep Everyone on the Same Page

Manual handoffs for your forms and paperwork are a thing of the past, or at least they should be. With email routing and cloud storage, there’s really no excuse for keeping your forms as a paper record. Even if you’ve moved from paper to PDFs, you’re still combating the inherent mistakes and time wasted entering your form data into other systems and reporting platforms that make your data useful. Digital forms automate the transfer of all your business data, setting you up for success in the long run, and keeping your data at your fingertips for any audits.

In your day-to-day business, digital forms can give you the unique ability to keep everyone on the same page regarding which forms have been completed. Customizable emails can even alert stakeholders or supervisors once a form has been completed, prompting any additional actions from your team. When it comes to an audit, you’ll have a detailed audit trail of exactly when your forms were completed, how many people were notified, and where the information was sorted from there. This type of transparency not only helps your team perform their jobs more efficiently, but it can speed up the audit process by eliminating unwanted surprises within your data.

Keep Security Top of Mind

Digital forms also offer a level of security that paper forms simply can’t match. With digital forms, you can control who has access to your data and set up multiple layers of security to protect your sensitive information. The best digital forms providers will provide data encryption when your information is being transferred to your integrated systems, letting you rest easy, especially for personal or sensitive information.

When it comes to forms that require legally binding signatures, such as contracts or payment agreements, make sure that your form provider offers E-SIGN Act-compliant digital signature capture. Electronic signatures can make eCommerce transactions faster, but if they don’t meet your local or industry standards, then they could cause issues for you in the future. Even if your digital forms provider offers legally binding eSignatures, it’s always best practice to check with your business advisor or attorney to confirm your exact use case meets all your business requirements.

It’s true, audit season can be a stressful and time-consuming process, but digital forms can help you streamline your preparation process. From organizing and accessing your data, to setting up automatic reminders and notifications, to improving collaboration and communication, digital forms offer a wide range of benefits that can help you face any audit.

About GoFormz

Move your forms online with GoFormz. We believe that everyone should be able to fill out their forms from anywhere and deliver products and services that redefine how people and businesses collect and process information. GoFormz is the mobile and online form solution to capture your data on any device and send it wherever you need it most. Through native integrations and an open API, take full control over all your business data and face any audit with confidence. Whether your construction business needs better safety records capture or your home health care business needs HIPAA-secure digital forms, GoFormz has you covered.