Electronic accounting archives | From paper to electronic, the digital transformation journey of accounting archive management

Among the top ten information technologies affecting China's accounting industry in 2023, electronic accounting archives rank fifth. Based on the results released over the past three years, electronic accounting archives have consistently ranked among the top.

As digital transformation advances,As front-end expense control systems and shared service systems become increasingly automated and intelligent due to technological upgrades, the traditional paper-based electronic accounting archives management model has increasingly become a pain point and difficulty in financial management.

1. Challenges of physical accounting archive management

Under the traditional physical archive management model, reimbursement personnel need to paste receipts, administrative personnel need to collect and coordinate mailing, and finance personnel need to receive and verify. After monthly closing, at the beginning of the following month, vouchers are printed and matched and organized with corresponding reimbursement documents, invoices, and other original vouchers, arranged neatly by voucher sequence number, then bound, with volume numbers, periods, and other content filled in, and finally placed on archive shelves.

In this process, costs such as pasting, mailing, and printing are incurred, as are storage costs for warehouses and compact shelving. Because remote mailing, physical borrowing that relies on manual verification, and physical management of archives rooms may lead to risks such as archive loss and damage during storage, and frequent physical retrieval in daily use also leads to low efficiency.

2. Changes in Policies and Regulations Bring New Dawn

· The issuance of Document No. 6 of 2020 and the release of the new Archives Law established the legal validity of electronic storage of accounting archives.

· The 2021 release of the "General Functional Requirements for Electronic Archive Management Systems" established the construction specifications and requirements for electronic archive systems at the national standard level.

· The 2022 release of the "Electronic Accounting Archive Management Specifications" clarified the requirements for the formation, collection, organization, archiving of accounting electronic accounting materials, as well as the storage, statistics, utilization, appraisal, and disposal of electronic accounting archives.

· On May 17 of this year, the Accounting Department of the Ministry of Finance issued a notice on the pilot of electronic voucher accounting data standards, covering 9 categories of electronic vouchers including VAT electronic invoices, fully digitalized e-invoices, and fiscal electronic receipts. The scope of electronic archives continues to expand, further promoting the comprehensive electronic construction of archives.

3. Core Objectives of Electronic Accounting Archives Construction

Paperless image trend: gradually realize paperless management of archives

In the short term, achieve paperless electronic vouchers such as electronic invoices and fully digitalized e-invoices, as well as internally generated documents such as warehouse receipts and accounting vouchers. In the long term, as policies continue to advance, fully digitalized e-invoices continue to be promoted, and the pilot for electronic voucher accounting data standards continues to expand, this will further advance comprehensive paperless archives, reduce the resources occupied by archive management, and lower management costs.

Image compliant with regulation: meets national policy and regulatory requirements

Ensure the authenticity, integrity, usability, and security of accounting archives, meeting the "four-property" testing requirements of archives management and the management requirements of relevant policies and regulations.

Image efficient utilization: efficiently respond to internal and external inspections

Meet daily archive borrowing and query needs, efficiently handling internal and external audits, tax inspections, and other inspection matters.

Strengthened image management: standardize internal management and strengthen risk control

By replacing the traditional manual archive management model with a systematic, centralized, and paperless electronic archive management model, it achieves unified internal archive management standards and avoids risks such as archive loss and damage during storage.

Image unified platform: unified information platform improves management efficiency

Build a unified electronic archives management platform to achieve full-process automation of the collection, archiving, retention, and utilization of various archives, and establish efficient matching and linking of accounting vouchers, original attachments, images, and other materials.

Value of image data: help enterprises transform and enhance archive value

Collect information from various business platforms to form structured data, supporting multi-dimensional query, analysis, and statistical operations. Expand intelligent archive application scenarios, improve archive utilization, and demonstrate information value.

Electronic accounting archive management is not merely replacing traditional physical archive management with electronic technology, nor merely moving offline business online. Rather, it must be based on the policies and regulations continuously promoted by the state, combined with the enterprise's actual internal management situation, fully consider the types of archives that need to be archived, which contents can be digitized, which external information systems are involved, and related archive management processes, and put forward corresponding transformation requirements for front-end processes and business-finance systems.

As the last mile of financial digitalization, electronic accounting archives profoundly influence and further promote the optimization of internal management systems, organizational division of responsibilities, business processes and models, and accounting standardization.

4. Core processes and business value of Kailing Technology electronic accounting archives:

①Collection of Accounting Materials：Supports collection of full archive data via local upload, scanning, interface transmission, and other methods（Bookkeeping vouchers, original vouchers：Such as reimbursement documents, electronic invoices, electronic receipts, and image files、Account book materials, report materials, etc.）, through integration with business systems, realize archive-related dataofautomatic association between them, enabling 100% archiving of enterprise archive data.

②Accounting Archive Organization：Perform data processing on collected accounting materials, classify and assemble archive metadata and their attachment files, encrypt data information, perform layout file format conversion, and complete file assembly and archiving. Through flexible definition of archive categories, custom settings can be made by multiple dimensions such as year, type, fonds, and project number, and fonds volumes can be established according to national standards.

③Utilization of accounting archives：For massive data, the archive management system provides multiple retrieval methods, including full-text search, conditional search, and metadata search to locate target documents. Employees can search in the borrowing list, select the files they need to borrow and add them to the borrowing process. They can also initiate a renewal application during the borrowing period to extend the borrowing cycle.

④Appraisal of Accounting Archives：Appraisal types in the archive system are generally divided into four categories，Opening Appraisal, Retention Period Appraisal, Dense Appraisal, Destruction Appraisal, etc. The System Can Automatically Remind When Archives Expire According to Pre-set Processing Rules, and Archivists Can Select a Batch of Archives Needing Appraisal for Batch Processing.

⑤Destruction of Accounting Archives：After the appraisal process ends, the system automatically places archives appraised as valueless into the pending destruction repository. Archive administrators periodically execute destruction actions. Destroyed archives can be deleted directly or enter the recycle bin according to preset rules, thereby avoiding the mistaken handling of some archives at that time，Ensure the security of users' archive information resources to the maximum extent.

5. Business Value of Kailing Technology Electronic Accounting Archives

Kailing Technology'sElectronic Accounting Archive Management SystemCan provide customers with full lifecycle management from paper archives to electronic archives，Achieve full-process management of electronic archives including collection, generation, archiving, borrowing, statistics, utilization, appraisal, and destruction, enabling enterprisesFarewell to the problems of traditional archives such as high cost, inconvenient access, and easy loss。After digitizing data, improve the archive data chain to facilitate financial sharing and solve issues such as centralized sharing of physical invoices and documents in financial sharing.

· Fully meets policy management requirements: meets the latest archiving requirements for fully digitalized e-invoices and electronic vouchers, efficiently responding to internal and external inspections.

· Empowering archive management personnel transformation: replacing the tedious basic work of archive organization and query for finance personnel and archive management personnel.

· Standardized management and strengthened control: standardize internal management, strengthen risk control, and resolve risks brought by decentralized archive management of branch offices.

· Empowering enterprise digital transformation: through the digital construction of archive management, contributing to the digital transformation of the entire group.

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Beijing Kailing Technology Co., Ltd.——an enterprise business-finance-tax digitalization solution service provider.

Kailing Technology provides solutions for sales management systems, procurement management systems, output invoicing systems, input invoice collection systems, imaging management systems, financial posting systems, electronic accounting archives and other businesses according to enterprise needs, professionally and efficiently helping enterprises transform and upgrade their business-finance-tax digital management.

If you have any business-finance-tax digital transformation needs, welcome to contact us. Beijing Kailing Technology will serve you wholeheartedly.