don’t settle for adequate knowledge.
by roman h. kepczyk
quantum of paperless: technology guide & checklist
to be effective in business today, every member of your firm must optimally utilize the microsoft office suite at an intermediate to advanced level for outlook, excel, and word.
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firms have traditionally been behind the adoption curve because of the lag time of accounting vendors supporting the latest version, particularly for audit engagement binders.
office 365 is the recommended solution as it comes integrated with more microsoft applications such as teams and onenote than traditional “boxed” licenses that firms had purchased in the past.
the cpafma 2020 it survey found that 77 percent of firms had transitioned to office 365, which was a significant jump from 24 percent in 2018.
these latest office applications promote efficiency through a standardized “ribbon” menu that takes advantage of today’s wider screens and utilizes symbols representing actions, instead of pull-down menus that use descriptions in words. office 2016 also promoted a consistent look regardless of whether the user was working on a desktop, tablet or their smartphone. people see and react to images much quicker than they read words, which makes them more efficient in the long run. when any one of the office applications is effectively learned, users are more proficient working with all of them.
as mentioned above, the top accounting vendors have worked out most of the bugs between their applications and office 365. if your firm is on office versions 2010 or older, or has microsoft software assurance where the upgrade is included, it is recommended that the firm jump to the latest supported version of microsoft office 365.
please note that automatic microsoft upgrades may cause incompatibilities with some of your on-premise accounting applications (which traditionally take the accounting vendors between 6-12 months to support the latest version). always be sure to verify the compatibility of your specific applications with microsoft office before upgrading as some accounting vendors still require local installations of office applications for their accounting products to work!
once you get the go-ahead to upgrade to a new version, send some of your best communicators to advanced excel, word and outlook training, so they can understand the improvements and then set up customized, accounting firm-specific training for the rest of your personnel. while there are excellent web resources for training including lynda.com and cpacrossings.com, one recommended training resource that works directly with many state cpa societies is k2 enterprises (k2e.com), which has very effective instructors and good content tailored to accounting firm needs, particularly for the excel and quickbooks courses.
recommended actions:
- verify the firm’s audit/accounting applications are supported on the current microsoft office version.
- plan transition and training to one common version as part of firmwide rollout.