CPA Practice Advisor – August 11, 2020
The current pandemic is shining a harsh light on the antiquated financial processes hindering oil and gas operators. The production side of oil and gas has always been quick to implement the latest technologies. However, investments for the back office have not kept pace, so accounting and operational teams rely primarily on paper-based systems and spreadsheets.
Today’s most common oil and gas version of file transfer protocol is a perfect example: Employees simply jot some figures on scraps of paper and hand-deliver them to someone in data entry. Job tickets, invoices, receipts, contracts, checks and countless other pieces of paper have to be processed manually, a time-consuming process that’s vulnerable to human error. Despite the inefficiency, digitizing all that data hasn’t been a high priority—until COVID-19 disrupted everything.