Distinct Means of Online Secure File Sharing

Tax and financial documents contain extremely sensitive PII (personally identifiable information), i.e. name, address, Social Security numbers (SSN), and financial account numbers, which in the wrong hands could leave your firm or client organizations vulnerable to identity theft or fiscal fraud. Though secure digital substitutes are available, many organizations still rely on the exchange of paper documents, faxing, or email addons to exchange these sensitive documents.

In addition to greater security, modern digital styles of document sharing increase efficiency and offer chances to improve the client experience. Let’s look at the most common methods of document sharing and the benefits of exchanging these old methods for a secure file-sharing portal designed precisely for accounting firms.

Traditional Mail, Paper Documents

Mailing a suite of printed documents is expensive and not environmentally friendly. A packet of 50 pages, on standard stock paper, would cost $2.50 to print and about $5.00 to mail. If an organization conducts 100 such transactions in a year, print and mail prices alone will total $750 or more.

Delivery of paper by conventional postal delivery will increment two or more days to the delivery time and carries the risk of mail theft or loss. Since many organizations retain the documents in digital form, the paper trail approach incurs the time and cost of digitizing content on either end, as both organizations scan and store the content.

Email: Not as Safe as You May Believe

Email is still a chief method of sending documents electronically. The clear rewards are that email is ubiquitous, easy to use, and the process is completely digital. In the 2017 AFOT survey, 70 percent of accountants surveyed said that their firms deliver some or all tax returns to the clients via email.

Despite having an identified security as a major concern, these firms continue to put themselves and their clients at risk by emailing tax returns. Unless a firm is using an encrypted email.

Accounting Firm Portal Sites

Accounting firm portal sites are similar to the file-sharing services, in that they rely on technology, and allow private file sharing between firms and clients. A portal designed precisely for accounting firms stands out, with several additional benefits over standard file sharing applications:

• Access control: Access control is better in that it receives authorizations from that application.

• Secureshare file during the upload or download: look for 256 bit SSL encryption for the best security.

• eSignature integration: since signature management is so often mandatory in document exchanges with the accounting clients, look for the ability to easily switch digital signatures within the portal.

Summary

To meet controlling compliance in the area of data security, including GDPR and other data privacy laws, accounting firms must move away from email and other outdated means of document sharing. Moving to a secure portal site planned to support an accounting practice can help firms meet the strains of more technology-savvy clients while refining a firm’s efficiency and productivity.