How a simple Excel step saves time and prevents stress during audits

Granted, nobody in Finance likes the extra hours and added stress that come along with audits. While there’s no way to eliminate the actual audits, there are certain things you can do to make the process run more smoothly.

A best-practice one Accounts Payable professional swears by promises to save time and reduce stress during audits. Pass this along to your finance staffers to help them keep some of their sanity during even the most stressful audits.

Short item descriptions

Whenever anybody on the A/P staffer’s team enters data into an Excel spreadsheet from an invoice, they start with all the normal stuff: vendor name, invoice number, etc.

Then, they take an extra step that makes a huge difference. What they do: Add a short, 20-character description for each item they enter into Excel.

Generally, these descriptions are about what an item is — or what the company uses that item for.

This small step makes a huge difference because it means anyone — whether it’s someone from Finance or an outside auditor — can jump right in, open the Excel file and understand exactly what everything in there means.

Result: Those 20-character descriptions go a long way toward saving valuable time and preventing headaches down the road.