Document management just got a bit easier, as QuickBooks has announced that the accounting software platform will now integrate with PandaDoc.
During the pandemic, business resources have continued to thrive. With more small businesses getting off the ground and other organizations in need of tools that can be used from home, platforms and software like QuickBooks have added integrations, updates, and more to alleviate the strain of hybrid work.
Now, the popular accounting software platform is adding even more functionality, as PandaDoc has announced it will officially integrate with QuickBooks.
Announced earlier this week, PandaDoc will officially integrate with QuickBooks to more easily and efficiently manage documents in the accounting platform. The integration is aimed at helping small and medium-sized businesses to consolidate software for simple processes.
“Our integration with PandaDoc is another step towards delivering solutions that fit the specific needs of mid-sized businesses with ease and efficiency,” said Kelly Vincent, Vice President of Mid-Market Small Business at Intuit in a press release. “The flexibility of PandaDoc, coupled with the goodness of QuickBooks Online Advanced, enables our platform to become the single source of truth for document management.”
The integration, dubbed PandaDoc Connector for QuickBooks, should be available right now. Just simply visit the QuickBooks app store, select PandaDoc, sign in to your account, and you’ll be on your way.
So what can this integration actually do to make your document management a bit easier in QuickBooks? You’ll open up a wide range of helpful functionalities when you pair these two platforms. Here’s a breakdown of everything PandaDoc can do in QuickBooks to help your business out:
Simply put, this integration could really open up your QuickBooks Online account to make your business life a lot easier. If you haven’t tried out the popular accounting software, we’ve done some thorough research, comparing it to other QuickBooks alternatives, so you can see if it’s a good fit for your business. Our two cents? It’s one of the best accounting software options out there, so we’d recommend giving it a shot if you’re in need.
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Conor is the Senior Writer for Tech.co. For the last six years, he’s covered everything from tech news and product reviews to digital marketing trends and business tech innovations. He’s written guest posts for the likes of Forbes, Chase, WeWork, and many others, covering tech trends, business resources, and everything in between. He’s also participated in events for SXSW, Tech in Motion, and General Assembly, to name a few. He also cannot pronounce the word “colloquially” correctly. You can email Conor at conor@tech.co.
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AICPA:
National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA) Erin Collins formally directed the IRS to take immediate steps toward implementing existing scanning technology to process tax returns filed on paper.
Collins issued the directive, which is dated March 29, under her authority pursuant to a delegation order in the Internal Revenue Manual to mandate administrative or procedural changes by the IRS to improve its functional operation or grant relief to taxpayers to protect their rights or to provide them an essential service.
In an NTA blog post on the Taxpayer Advocate Service website, Collins said the directive was necessitated by repeated warnings that processing paper returns remains a weakness for the IRS. As she said in her 2021 Annual Report to Congress in January, "paper is the IRS’s Kryptonite, and the IRS is buried in it."
She cited recent updates on paper return processing that suggest the problem is not getting better: As of March 18, the paper return backlog numbered nearly 15 million returns, Collins said. Representing processing delays of 10 months or more, the backlog includes 4.7 million original individual income tax returns, 2.6 million amended individual income tax returns, 4.9 million original business tax returns, and 1.2 million amended business tax returns.
"Over the past year, the IRS has not made progress in reducing its backlog," Collins said in the directive, noting that as of a year earlier, unprocessed original individual returns numbered slightly fewer, 4.6 million.
If the IRS is to meet its stated goal of eliminating its backlog by the end of 2022, it will need to adopt new ways of processing paper returns, mostly by implementing scanning technology that itself is hardly new, Collins said.
"If the IRS had implemented scanning technology, it is unlikely the current processing backlog would exist," she said.
Moreover, the current process of transcribing the returns manually by operators typing their contents into a computer is error-prone. About 22% of transcribed returns last year contained data transcription errors, Collins said.
2-D barcoding: Already in limited use
One of two methods Collins recommended, 2-D barcoding, is as time-honored and ubiquitous as most retail checkout lines and the 17 state departments of revenue that used it to process returns as of 20 years ago. Just as scanning a barcode on a retail product brings up all relevant details to a sale, one placed on a tax return by tax preparation software and printed out by the taxpayer for mailing can encode all information necessary for the taxing authority to process the return.
The IRS has in fact implemented 2-D barcoding for certain forms, including Schedules K-1, which are issued to partners of partnerships and shareholders of S corporations, reporting their shares of the entities’ income, deductions, credits, and other tax items.
Yet the technology’s potential for processing an entire return has been stymied by 20 years of dithering by the Service, Collins said. In 2002, when then–National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, citing the example of the 17 states, recommended 2-D barcoding to the IRS, the IRS demurred, saying it could undermine taxpayers’ transition to e-filing.
A year later, however, the IRS began working with tax software companies to implement 2-D barcoding for some tax forms, such as Schedule K-1. The Service asked Congress in 2017 to provide it authority to require taxpayers filing paper returns prepared with software to use a 2-D barcode, which Congress initially included in an early version of the Taxpayer First Act.
But before the Taxpayer First Act’s enactment in 2019 (as P.L. 116-25), "the IRS had changed its position again," ostensibly to give it more flexibility to use other scanning technology, and the provision was stricken from the bill’s enacted version at the IRS’s request, Collins said.
A Program Manager Technical Assistance memo (PMTA 2022-002) in December 2021 advised that the IRS currently lacks authority to require tax software developers to include barcodes, but the IRS can include one on its own tax returns and forms. The Service also can request that the software companies do so, Collins said. She directed that the IRS immediately begin discussing this with the companies in time for the 2023 filing season and, if the companies decline to do so, to ask Congress to mandate it.
OCR: A backup to barcodes
The other main technology used for scanning paper documents is known as optical character recognition (OCR), which interprets the marks on a document and renders them into computer characters. While OCR has the advantage of also being able to read handwriting, it doesn’t always do so accurately, Collins said. Even so, some states use it in tandem with 2-D barcoding, such as when a barcode is smeared or otherwise unreadable, Collins said. She directed the IRS to also develop a plan to use OCR, also by the start of the 2023 filing season or, if not feasible by then, the following season.
The directive asks the IRS to respond to it by May 13, 2022, and state whether it plans to implement the directed actions, plans to implement alternative actions that will achieve the same objective, or declines to take the directed actions. If the IRS indicates it will implement the directed actions, the directive also asks the IRS to provide a detailed plan by May 31 to implement the two technologies for the 2023 filing season.
The AICPA continues to advocate for better IRS services; visit the webpage describing AICPA advocacy efforts to learn more.
— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Paul Bonner at Paul.Bonner@aicpa-cima.com.

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I’ve looked at a lot of scanners over the years. The Raven Pro I reviewed last year is excellent; but I keep coming back to Fujitsu scanners. The reason is simple: they work. My wife and I have bought four ScanSnap scanners. They range from desktop size to tiny handheld. Our oldest is about a decade old now, and all of them just keep working. We have had to replace some consumables (like pads and pick rollers) as the paper friction wears out the rollers over time. Properly maintained, the scanners just keep working.

Also: Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600: Wireless game-changer

So when Fujitsu asked me if I wanted to review their enterprise-class fi-8170, I had to say yes.

Here are the specs of the fi-8170 scanner I’ve been testing:

• Scanning speed: Simplex 70 ppm at 200/300 dpi, duplex 140 ipm at 200/300 dpi
• Optical resolution: 600 dpi
• Output resolution: 0 to 600 dpi, 1200 dpi via the driver
• Output format: Color at 24-bit, grayscale at 8-bit, monochrome at 1-bit
• Document size maximum: 8.5 x 14 inches
• Document size minimum: 1.9 x 2 inches
• Long page scanning: Up to 240 inches
• Paper weight: Thickness from 5.3 to 124-pound stock
• Booklet thickness: 7 mm (0.276 inch) or less
• Plastic card thickness: 1.4 mm (0.055 inch) or less
• ADF capacity: 100 sheets
• Expected daily volume: 10,000 sheets
• USB interface: Supports USB 3.2 Gen1x1, USB 2.0, USB 1.1
• Ethernet: Supports 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T

Scanning performance

With an expected volume of a whopping 10,000 sheets per day, the fi-8170 is a beast, even though it’s almost exactly the same size and shape as the desktop ScanSnap it’s going to replace. Don’t get me wrong: that old ScanSnap still works — it’s just that this is oh, so much more powerful.

8.5/10

Fujitsu fi-8170 scanner

Excellent

 $1,000 at Amazon

Pros

• Way fast
• Flexible material handling
• Lots of document types, thicknesses, and sizes supported
• Drivers for Windows, Mac, and Linux

Cons

• No Wi-Fi or any wireless connectivity
• Clunky Windows-only software application
• Enterprise-grade solution requires pricy add-on licenses

The first is speed. It rockets through pages at 70 pages per minute. That’s sheets of paper through the scanner. If you scan duplex (on each side), it can grab 140 images per minute. Let’s put that in perspective. The book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is 309 pages. A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire (the first book in the series) is 694 pages. At 140 images per minute, the fi-8170 could scan both of them in just over seven minutes.

Now, of course, you’re more often going to be scanning in business documents, but that gives you some idea of the pace of the scanner. It’s really, really fast. The automatic document feeder holds up to 100 sheets, so the slowest factor in scanning performance will be how fast you can load more paper.

When scanning in huge stacks of documents at super-fast speeds, there is a problem. On many scanners, the pages sometimes feed together, causing misfeeds. Fujitsu has an interesting technology in the fi-8000 series called Automatic Separation Control. As the volume of documents to be scanned increases, the scanner switches to a stronger torque level. This flexibility helps to ensure documents feed reliably.

feed management in this scanner is very smart. It can identify thicker documents (ID cards, credit cards, folders, envelopes, passports) which help the device prevent misfeeds. And it scans all these document types without any carrier or transport holder.

One feature I found particularly nifty is the overscan protection. Let’s say you’re scanning in a document, and it’s not quite straight in the scanner. On traditional scanners, part of the document might be missed. Typically, those corners have page numbers, dates, and various signatures — all of which are very important and must be preserved when being scanned in.

The fi-8170 detects offset documents and extends the scanning area to grab those image edges. It’s a lot like video stabilization in cameras. The camera grabs a larger area to deliver a stabilised image but then rotates and crops each frame to make sure the video is smooth — the fi-8170 works in a similar way, but one frame (or image) at a time.

Overall image quality is excellent, as is the color presentation. Unfortunately, the fi-8170 only has Ethernet and USB for connectivity. There is no Wi-Fi. After looking at other Wi-Fi scanners and the incredible flexibility they provide (I’m talking about the Fujitsu ix1600 in particular), it was really disappointing to realize you couldn’t set up a central wireless scanning station with the fi-8170. It has to be physically connected to your network or computer.

The software

The software situation is a bit disconcerting for someone coming to the fi-8170 from the ScanSnap line. First, the super-familiar ScanSnap software is nowhere to be found. Instead, the fi-8170 comes with two products under the PaperStream brand.

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TL;DR: As of Feb. 20, a lifetime subscription to the iScanner App(opens in a new tab) is just $39.99 instead of $199, which saves you 79%.
If you’ve ever had to print something out to sign it and the scan it back to send digitally, you know what a hassle it is to not be able to edit PDFs directly online. With a scanner app, that will become a problem of the past.
iScanner(opens in a new tab) is basically like having your own personal digital assistant. It lets you easily scan any document and have edit it on your phone or laptop. It can help to streamline everyday business tasks that normally end up wasting a chunk of your time.
You can scan documents, educational materials, hand-outs, and more and mark them up, edit them, or even sign them as needed. Then, simply send them back within seconds to the person who needs them. In addition to marking them up and signing them, you can even add your own personal stamps to them. 
But this app is so much more than just scanning. It can even help you count up similar objects on the docs and solve math problems and equations just by reading the text that’s presented. It can be a convenient tool for students, accountants, realtors, managers, and lawyers. You can even store your scans as multipage PDF or JPEG files to make it super easy to share with others. Use it to convert ID cards and documents for your clients, share your details for apartment applications, and more. It reads any QR code with your device camera within seconds.
We’ve featured this productivity tool before, and it’s on sale once again for 79% off. You can get lifetime access to iScanner for iOS for only $39.99(opens in a new tab) for a limited time.
Prices subject to change.

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