テレワークの普及、ワークライフバランスの向上、残業規制やDXへの取り組みなどの外部要因により、多くの企業がこれまで以上に業務効率を上げていく必要性に迫られていると感じる。
すべての人に時間は平等に与えられているが、子供の保育園等の送迎や両親の介護などにより、個人の使える時間は限られている。
使える時間が限られているからこそ、個々人のスキルに依存することなく、組織的に対策を行う必要があるのではないでしょうか。
今回は弊社での業務効率改善の事例をご紹介いたします。

業務効率改善の必要性

これまで、記帳代行や申告書作成などの業務は、紙に印刷して作業を行い、毎月大量の紙資料をファイリングし、書庫へ保管していました。
翌月になったら、また同じように大量の紙資料を作成、保管するというサイクルの繰り返し。
そして、年に１回、書庫に溜まりに溜まった書類を外部倉庫へ搬出するため、スタッフ総出で、一日がかりで汗だくになりながら書類の箱詰めを行う、EPCSの一大イベント、ファイル整理。
また、多くの会社で行われている請求書発行業務についても、毎月の請求書印刷、封筒への封入、郵便局への持ち込み、郵送手続きなど紙での作業に依存していました。

そこで、保管費用削減、印刷コスト削減、スペースの有効活用、テレワークの推進等のため、上記業務について、ペーパーレスでの業務運用方法を策定しました。その結果、現在では契約書の押印など極一部の業務を除き、ほとんどの業務において、ペーパーレス化が実現できており、紙で業務を行っていたときよりもコスト削減に繋がっています。

ペーパーレス化により業務のスピードが上がり、また、副次的ではありますが、ペーパーレス化の普及により、在宅勤務の増加→通勤時間の削減→個人の使える時間が増加→ワークライフバランスの向上、という流れができたように感じます。

ペーパーレス始めました

ご存知の方も多いと思いますが、令和3年度の税制改正において、電子帳簿保存法が改正され、電子取引において電子データを受領した場合は、電子データのまま保存することが義務付けられており、令和6年1月1日以降は電子取引にかかる電子データの保存義務が強制されることとなります。
国もDXの普及を推進しており、これまで要件が難しかった電子帳簿保存法の要件が緩和され、今まで以上にペーパーレスの実現が容易になってきたように思います。

電子帳簿保存法では、国税関係帳簿、国税関係書類及び電子取引を対象に、①電子帳簿等保存、②スキャナ保存及び③電子データ保存の3つの区分での電子保存方法を規定しています。

まずは、すぐに始められる請求書発行を紙からPDFに変更して（上記①）みて、次に適用要件はあるものの、比較的容易に進められる取引先等からPDF等で受領した請求書などを電子保存（上記③）するところから始めてみてはいかがでしょうか。
どのように保存するかルールを決める必要がありますが、日々の郵送やファイリング業務という無駄な業務（ストレス）から開放されると思います。

ペーパーレスをやってみよう

弊社では、電子帳簿保存法について、ご相談を承っておりますので、HPまたは各担当に気軽にお問い合わせください。

使える時間が限られているからこそ、個々人のスキルに依存することなく、組織的に対策を行う必要があるのではないでしょうか。今回は弊社での業務効率改善の事例をご紹介いたします。

業務のやり方を変えてみる

佐田 好隆

Last time, I introduced two reasons why it is difficult to train tax professionals. The first is that there are many kind of taxes to learn, and the second is that highly seasonal and not busy all year around. When busy times are limited, tax personnel can't just do tax work. As a result, knowledge of other tasks is required, and the knowledge and experience that tax personnel needs to acquire is enormous.
And it is very difficult in terms of time and cost to train tax personnel who require a lot of knowledge including such non-tax knowledge. Therefore, only those who can do tax work will be depended so that they will do tax work all the time.
Then, is there a way to avoid such depending particular employee?

In order to prevent depending on particular employee, it is necessary to hire multiple personnel with abundant knowledge of taxes. That way, you don't have to spend time and money developing human resources from the beginning, and even if one person retires, you can continue to work without falling into depending on particular employee.
But the question is whether we can hire such employees when and in the required number. If you are recruiter, you may have some experience, but the fact is that hiring people with the knowledge you are looking for at the timing you want to hire does not go well.
It would be even more difficult to hire multiple such people.

How about outsourcing tax works to prevent that from happening?
If you outsource tax works and leave it to an outside expert, a tax accountant or a tax accountant firm, you will not need to develop human resources in-house. The tax accountant and tax accountant firm already have a huge amount of knowledge and experience, so there is no need to spend a lot of money and time on training. You also don't have to worry about when your tax work will be busy. Therefore, you will not concerned about depending on particular employee, and you will not have to struggle to hire personnel with the specialized knowledge and experience.
If you want to have someone who is familiar with taxes in your company, you can ask the tax accountant or tax accountant firm to give a lecture on your tax matter.

Even in a company that currently has a tax personnel, by outsourcing the tax work, the person in charge of tax work can make to perform in closer to the main business of the company. For example, in order to consider the future of a company, management accounting for each section will be required. You can assign the person in charge of tax work as the analyst, or you may assign him/she to ROE management. You can also assign him/she to core business for his/her knowledge of finance and tax.
In any case, the person in charge of taxation will be able to focus on the work necessary for the management of the company. By outsourcing tax work in this way, I think you can effectively use human resources.

Proposal of outsourcing - to prevent depending on particular employee

What do you think?
How about considering outsourcing tax work as a means of reducing the risk of depending on particular employee and effectively using human resources?

This time is a column following the previous column. It is very difficult in terms of time and cost to train tax personnel who require a lot of knowledge including such non-tax knowledge. Therefore, only those who can do tax work will be depended so that they will do tax work all the time. Then, is there a way to avoid such depending particular employee?

A Struggle to Train Tax Professionals (2)

鈴木 康功

When I first started working in accounting as a new employee, the company had just introduced an accounting system. For me, preparing vouchers meant entering transactions into the accounting system, and the vouchers I had to check were in the form output from the system.

One day, I was instructed to look up the previous year's transaction and for the first time I saw the vouchers that had been used in the past. I still remember how surprised I was to see that they were all handwritten, and how laborious it must have been to make them. Even in the days, the general ledger and trial balance sheets had been created automatically, but the systemization of voucher input, the entry point to the accounting process, was a big step from "manual" to "automatic. Thirty years have passed since then, and with the spread of optical reading and AI, even the slip entry process is now automated. There is no doubt that the "automatic" part will continue to increase in the future.

Automation has also extended to the field of tax return preparation. It is now common to hear that even people with little experience in tax return preparation can prepare tax returns by simply entering the necessary information into a template and having the AI read the information. In fact, recent technological advances in tax return preparation software have been so remarkable that, as long as staff does not make a mistake in understanding the contents of the input items, it is possible to create a correct tax return even if the staff does not know the connections among the tax return sheets or, more specifically, tax laws well. Is that really the right kind of "automatic"?
　
No, in my opinion, it is not. Only those who understand "manual" can master "automatic". Last year, we spent a considerable amount of time training our employees to be able to file consumption tax and corporate tax returns by hand. At first glance, this may seem to run counter to the trend toward automation, but I feel that it is precisely because automation has advanced that this type of training is necessary.

We will continue to focus on employee training while sometimes struggling between "manual" and "automatic" training.

The spread of optical reading and AI, even the slip entry process is now automated. What is necessary now that "automatic" has progressed?

Between Manual and Automatic

幅舘 稔

Many business owners and accounting managers may have considered outsourcing accounting (Business Process Outsourcing, for short “BPO”) due to a variety of issues, such as "We cannot hire a replacement for sudden retirement ", "We cannot secure a desired human resources,", "Employee motivation is not up due to routine work. 

Many managers and accounting manager may have considered BPO but have abandoned the idea due to concerns about security issues such as information leaks and whether it would really be effective.

The state of emergency was declared due to the epidemic of the new COVID-19 infection, and telework was recommended due to the request to restrict office work. The number of companies implementing telework, which had been thought to be difficult for accounting work, has increased dramatically, and paperless work also has been progressed.
We believe that the increase in the number of accounting work that can be performed by working from home and the shift to paperless operations have greatly expanded the possibilities for the introduction of BPO.

In order to successfully implement BPO, it is very important to recognize what issues need to be resolved and to understand the pros and cons of outsourcing.

Let us now summarize the issues of accounting work and the pros and cons of BPO.

Sudden retirement
Resources (shortage of resources for consolidation work, disclosure work and tax work
Training of accounting personnel
Depending on particular employee
Enormous amount of routine work
Old-fashioned way of doing things, fixed concepts

Issues of accounting work

Prevention of deterioration of business quality due to retirement
Reduction of recruiting and training costs
Concentration of human resources on core business
Provide improvement plans
Manualization
Improvement of business quality (case studies and know-how of other companies)
Full outsourcing support at the time of subsidiary establishment
Correspondence to laws related to work style reform (Hatarakikata Kaikaku), - control of overtime hours for quarterly and financial closing operations

Advantages of BPO

Communication loss
Preparation time and occurrence of initial cost
Outsourcing costs become high if operations are not organized
Risk of retuning in-house work after terminating BPO
Difficulty in responding flexibly to schedule changes
Consideration of security measures

Disadvantages of BPO

As mentioned above, in order to succeed in BPO, it is very important to recognize what issues need to be resolved and to understand the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing.
We have over 20 years of outsourcing experiences and provide not only accounting outsourcing services, but also tax, payroll, social insurance, and Human Resources outsourcing services.

If you are considering BPO, we would like to talk with you. We will work with you to solve your company's problems and help you grow.

In order to successfully implement BPO, it is very important to recognize what issues need to be resolved and to understand the pros and cons of outsourcing. Let us now summarize the issues of accounting work and the pros and cons of BPO.

Pros and cons of Outsourcing

金子 雅英

The year is almost over.
The beginning of the new year brings with it a flurry of tax returns to be prepared and filed by many companies, including corporate tax returns for companies whose fiscal year ends in December, the preparation of statutory reports, depreciable asset tax returns, and year-end adjustments for some companies.

The company's tax staff is responsible for handling these tax affairs of the company.

The company must train its tax staff to be able to handle these tasks. However, it may take a lot of effort to train such a tax person in the company.

Tax Professionals at Work

There are reasons specific to taxation that make it difficult to train tax professionals.

The first of these is that there are many kind of taxes that are relevant to a company.

The first familiar ones are corporate, business, and inhabitant taxes. You must file a tax return within 2 months (or 3 months if the deadline has been extended) after the end of the fiscal year.
Next is consumption tax. Businesses with taxable sales more than 10 million yen are required to file a tax return.
Depreciable assets tax is probably the next most popular tax. If you own fixed assets over a certain amount, you are required to file a tax return. In addition, if you have an office or place of business of a certain size in a so-called government-designated city, you are subject to business office tax. In addition, there are a wide variety of other taxes related to companies, such as registration and license tax and revenue stamp.

In order to file and process these tax returns, the tax staff needs to be knowledgeable about many of these taxes. However, it takes many years of training and experience to acquire this knowledge.

Reasons why it is difficult to train in-house tax staff (1) Many kind or taxes

The second reason is that taxation is highly seasonal and not busy all year round.

Operations such as corporate and business taxes are concentrated during the fiscal year end. In addition, the deadline of depreciable asset tax and statutory tax documents are at the end of January, Other tax items will need to be processed accordingly when they come up.
Thus, tax works are not always present.

Even if you are able to train an in-house tax professional, it is difficult to keep that person engaged solely in taxation.
In many cases, the tax staff may also be responsible for accounting, monthly closing, management accounting, and corporate finance.
Tax staff has to acquire other knowledge as well as tax knowledge.

Reasons why it is difficult to train in-house tax staff (2) Concentration of time

Tax professionals require a vast amount of knowledge and experience.
Therefore, it is not an easy task to train many employees who can possess such tax knowledge and experience.

Therefore, the number of employees who can perform tax work is limited, and depending on a particular employee.
This is fine as long as the employee is working well, but if the employee becomes ill or retires, it is not easy to find an employee who can take over the tax work.

Therefore, it may be a big issue for a company to train in-house tax staff with that much knowledge and experience.

Depending on a particular employee for tax works

In our next issue, we will share with you how to prevent depending on a particular employee for tax work.

Notice for the next issue

The year is almost over. The beginning of the new year brings with it a flurry of tax returns to be prepared and filed by many companies, including corporate tax returns for companies whose fiscal year ends in December, the preparation of statutory reports, depreciable asset tax returns, and year-end adjustments for some companies.

Column

Column List：Accounting/Taxes

業務のやり方を変えてみる

A Struggle to Train Tax Professionals (2)

Between Manual and Automatic

Pros and cons of Outsourcing

A Struggle to Train Tax Professionals