What do Taxes and EDI have in Common?

Guest blog for Aurora Technolgies by Nathan Camp of Liaison Technologies.  Photo appears courtesy of Simon Cunningham.  April 15th...a day of stress and gloom for most Americans. The day when our tax returns are due back to our Federal and State governments.

My tax season actually starts the week after January 31st. I relish the day when I have my pile of forms in front of me, my tax preparation software loaded on my computer, and the first entry field ready to go. I sip on my beverage, savoring this moment.

Click. I successfully pull over my personal details. Click. I download my W2 information from my employer’s payroll provider. Yes, things are going very well……

….and then, I am suddenly confronted by an unspeakable issue. My spouse is a non-salaried worker for several groups and her 10-99s cannot be downloaded. The horror! I realize that I have to enter her 10-99 forms manually and there are five of them. I enter the first. I enter the second. I enter and correct mistakes on the third. I enter the final two.  Then I go back through all five to review the data. Finding more data entry mistakes on the second, I fix those and finish my beverage.  I realize I am sweating.  I can’t afford to make a mistake here. If I do this right, I may have money coming back. But if I do this wrong, I could be in jeopardy of audits and fines.

The two examples above absolutely prove to me how integrated data exchanges are important and superior to manual data entry. In my W2 example, I easily downloaded a complete record of my financial forms, in a format that my software could use immediately. This exemplifies the benefits of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in action.

If, as in the case of the 10-99s above, you still manually process paper, fax, or e-mails for your purchase orders and invoices, you might be putting your company into a precarious position. First, data entry errors will occur. And do your employees care enough to double check every order they process? Will they catch their mistake if they accidentally hit a six instead of a nine? Incorrect billings, incorrect invoicing, and potential chargebacks can all lead to excessive costs. Second, how much are you paying these employees to manually key this data? Don’t forget, they may be copying the information two or three times, adding to their data entry time. And time equals expense. If you pause to look at your hard costs and productivity costs for non-EDI data entry, you will likely realize that integration options exist, are available to you, and are likely going to save you money.

As I finished my tax return this year, I was thankful for the reminder about the importance of EDI. I hope you can put it to good use this year in your company too. 

Aurora Technologies/EDI Support, Inc specializes in EDI implementation and data integration solutions.  For more information, please contact Shandra Locken, at shandra@edisupport.com or 800-404-9182 x25.