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Where Is The Leverage? Productivity As Marriage Of Effectiveness And Efficiency
“23.06., 179,95 €, BA ÜW.”
“23.06., 4,87 €, BA KK.”
“24.06., 20,31 €, BA LS.”
The printer is humming in the background, stacks of paper in front of me, binders bursting with invoices on the desk next to me.
It’s that time of the month: accounting time. Printing all invoices that we received in the past months, sorting them, labeling them when each transaction took place, and then filing them away.
Not my favorite activity, but after doing it a few time, I became incredibly efficient at it. I was doing it fast, (almost) mistake-free, and it took me less time every month, but it was still a substantial amount.
A few weeks later, I learned that you actually don’t need to retain digital invoices on paper in Germany. You can just save them digitally, in an unalterable manner.
WHAT??? Why did I not know this before? I had spent precious tens (or possibly hundreds) of hours of my life printing out invoices and filing them away (and I hate filing stuff, as my colleagues will attest to)? We were killing trees and running up our printer costs for nothing?
I was livid, but also kind of excited. Being able to do everything digitally made…
