It is inevitable. It happens every year. Hiding from it or ignoring it won’t make it go away. The dreaded company audit; there is no way around it, so companies must do their best to comply with the current standards. And to be able to prove that they are meeting those standards. The compliance regulations companies must strive to meet are HIPAA for the medical field and Sarbanes-Oxley regarding any company’s financial records.

There are records management systems today that make the auditing process simple and painless. Each time there is activity within the records management system, the event is recorded to a log file. For example, when a medical record is updated by a doctor, the event is recorded, dated, and saved for future confirmation. If a company document is deleted from the records management system, that occurrence is noted and logged.

Another advantage to using an auditing program in conjunction with your records management system is that in a sense, security is increased. In other words, the auditing programs have the ability to record each system login, logout, or bad password attempt. Companies are able to track such important information and evaluate any security issues.

Additionally, on an individual basis, a records management system audit program allows the auditing of specific users. The system records the activities of predefined, selected users. With this feature activated and configured, there will be no question as to “who did what.”

Through the records management system, your company has a means of controlling the activities within the system. These options are configured and set up during the installation process. A user or a group of users may be prevented from modifying or deleting company records. This ensures that the documents do not get wrongfully changed or deleted. This feature allows your company to demonstrate that important records are secure and can never be lost.

To further take advantage of this technology and end possible compliance problems, some auditing program packages include email alert messaging. The value of email messages is that a designated auditor is immediately alerted to information, such as system startup or shutdown, database space availability, and user access denied.

From the data captured in your records management system, audit reports are generated. The reports contain information such as the presence or absence of documents, identification of document dates, document counts, and the occurrence of events within the system.

It takes a great deal of time and effort to operate and manage a company today. Installing a records management system with auditing capabilities lessens the anxiety over auditing and allows your company to concentrate on its productivity and success.

Does your company sweat it out each year during the auditing process? Can your company afford the time it takes to investigate the deletion or modification of a customer record? Research the solutions available to these and other compliance-related issues by investing in an electronic records management system with audit logging capabilities.