Green is the new black – why go paperless?

22nd November 202020th February 2019 by 1Accounts

GREEN IS THE NEW BLACK

Trees. Water. Carbon emissions. Time. Money. The environmental impact of paper production in the financial industry is significant and yet completely avoidable. In an age where nearly everything is digital and in the cloud, we needen’t use so much paper. Using an online calculater we have esstimated that as firm we save the following per year:

450kgs of Wood
10,900 Litres of Water
£146.80K
7000 hours

The Facts

Worldwide the use of paper has risen by 400% in the last 40 years. The paper industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy in the world. Going paperless can help:

Save trees – Trees provide habitats for animals, covert CO2 to oxygen and help clean our water.
Save water – To make 1 A4 peice of paper it take 10 liters of water. Being paperless can help conserve our worlds water sources.
Reduce polution – Making one tonne of paper emits more than 1.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Using elss will help reduce the number of pollutants in our atmosphere.
Fuel – Documents need to get from A to B. The transportation of documents burns fuel and releases greenhouse gases. Eliminating paper documents will reduce the amount of fuel used.
Save time – Printing, stuffing, posting, waiting & chasing all takes time. By going online you can get your time back.
Save money – Paper, envelopes, ink and postage all costs money.Imagain being able to eliminate this cost.

How We Work

Emails not letters

In todays era most companies are using email, however some still use ‘snail mail’ to send important documents. We however send all our emails via Microsoft outlook. If any include secure information we will send via Karbon. Emails not only save lots of paper they also save the time and money it would take to post each client queries. The only letters we send are to HMRC and to send goodies to our clients.

Digitally Sign Documents

All our Accounts, Tax Returns and engagment letters have to be signed by clients. We do this digitally. For our engagment letters we use Practice Ignition and for accounts, tax returns and any other documents we use Docusign. These products have made our life so much easier, no more posting to clients and then waiting for them to sign and send it back to us.

Online Software

All our clients use online accounting software, so not only are we paperless, we are helping our clients become paperless to. Gone are the days of manual books, paper records and bags full of receipts. With the online software we suggest to clients that they digitally send their invoices and request their suppliers to send their invoices directly to their Xero or receipt bank. This avoids the need for paper. We also use Xero and digitally send our invoices each month.

We love that being more efficent and saving money goes hand in hand with helping the envirnment and we love helping our cleints become paperless to!