On June 25, the BDO group of companies, supported by Taxcom, held a meeting of CFO club to look into "Electronic document circulation as a way of improving the efficiency of financial services". Those in attendance discussed the practical use of internal systems controlling electronic content and legally valid paperless documents exchange between companies.
Victoria Smirnova, chief accountant of the Boehringer Ingelheim company, described the project involving the automation of the processing of advance amounts spending reports done with the participation of the BDO outsourcing division. On the basis of a cloud solution, the Concur company implemented such functions as setting up business trips and preparing reports automatically formed in compliance with the company's policies, setting up the mechanism of having the reports approved, having document status notifications emailed to employees, and electronically archiving documents. The BDO outsourcing division has been commissioned to verify advance spending reports. Its employees monthly process over 800 documents for Boehringer Ingelheim.
Elena Pletneva, chief accountant of the HeadHunter company, presented a project involving legally valid electronic documents exchange between the company and clients of the hh.ru portal. According to Elena, the monthly document traffic involving HeadHunter's clients amounts to about 80 thousand sets, not including aggregated payments coming in through computation centers. This is why HeadHunter continuously seeks ways to simplify documents circulation and lower its cost. This resulted in the introduction, at the hh.ru portal, of a solution allowing to exchange legally valid documents. The Taxcom company was selected as service provider and its services are also available to HeadHunter's clients using the services of other communications operators for the purposes of electronic document circulation. When starting a relationship with counteragents excluding the use of paper documents, the companies sign an agreement for the use of electronic documents circulation. This allows to minimize risks related to the imperfections of Russia's legislation related to this field. This done, the partners exchange electronic documents only. At this time, the number of clients exchanging electronic documents with the company is relatively small. Yet it keeps growing because the method is convenient and because HeadHunter actively explains its attitudes.
This is confirmed by Elena Barvitskaya, head of Taxcom's office in St. Petersburg. According to her, at this time, there are over 115 thousand companies in Russia that electronically exchange legally valid documents. The results of the poll held by Taxcom show that the most widespread reasons for companies to shy away from electronic documents exchange include the absence of established relevant arbitration practices allowing decisions to be made in favor of taxpayers (24% of respondents), the reluctance of counteragents to use electronic documents exchange (24%) and the habit of dealing with paper copies (20%). However, 50% of the polled companies consider possibly switching to electronic documents exchange within the next six months.
