Electronic Document Management System (EDMS)

What is an electronic document management system?

An electronic document management system (EDMS) is a system that captures, stores, manages, and retrieves digital documents in a central location.

Document management systems are essential for organization and productivity. They streamline workflows, enhance collaboration, and ensure regulatory compliance.

However, traditional systems struggle with the growing volume of data. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers a solution by automating tasks like document classification and data extraction. AI has begun to revolutionize document management, boosting accuracy and efficiency and cutting costs.

Document management is important for finance teams, where document-heavy processes like invoice processing, maintaining audit trails, and financial reporting require a high level of accuracy, security, and efficiency. As a result, the incorporation of AI into EDMS is also changing the way finance teams work.

Key features of EDMS.

Document capture.

Scanning or importing various file formats (PDF, Word, Excel, etc.). AI-driven systems can automate data extraction from documents with OCR (Optical Character Recognition), eliminating manual entry.

Indexing and metadata.

Assigning tags, keywords, and custom fields to documents for easy organization and retrieval. This helps with one of the biggest challenges in document management: organizing large volumes of documents. AI can automatically classify and tag documents by content, which makes it easy to search and retrieve the right information.

Workflow automation.

Creating rule-based workflows for approvals, routing, and notifications in order to streamline processes like invoice approvals or expense reimbursements.

Version control.

Tracking changes and maintaining accurate audit trails, including the ability to revert to previous versions if needed.

Security and access controls.

Using role-based access permissions, encryption, and audit logs to keep sensitive financial data secure and stay compliant with regulations. AI-driven document management systems can analyze vast amounts of risk data to help identify threats.

Search and retrieval.

Powerful search capabilities to quickly find documents based on keywords, metadata, or content.

Integrations.

Ability to seamlessly integrate with accounting, ERP, and other financial systems for streamlined data flow.

Benefits of EDMS for finance professionals.

Reduced costs: Eliminates paper storage costs, minimizes manual processing time, and reduces errors.

Improved efficiency: Automates workflows, speeding up approvals, invoice processing, and financial reporting. Saves time having to retrieve paper records.

Enhanced visibility and control: Real-time insights into spending patterns, outstanding invoices, and potential bottlenecks. Ensures decision-makers are always working from current information.

Strengthened compliance: Audit trails, access controls, and version history help meet record retention and regulatory requirements (SOX, GAAP, etc.).

Improved collaboration: Secure, central access to documents facilitates teamwork and reduces version control issues.

Choosing the right EDMS.

When selecting an EDMS for your team, consider:

Scalability: Can it grow with your company and handle an increasing volume of documents?

Ease of use: A user-friendly interface is crucial for adoption and minimizing training time. If it’s not easy to use, employees will find workarounds.

Features and functionality: Ensure the solution aligns with your specific finance workflows and compliance needs.

How Airbase helps with electronic document management.

Airbase’s spend management platform acts as an EDMS by capturing all transaction details in real time and syncing the entire transaction record to the GL. Users can view a complete audit trail of every transaction, regardless of payment method, without having to sift through Slack, email, and other channels.

This audit trail includes requests, the complete approval chain, purchase orders, invoices, payment details, and supporting documentation.