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When Hurricane Katrina hit the Atlantic Coast in 2005, many businesses were devastated, never to reopen. The tragic storm traveled right over the town of Slidell, Louisiana where Tom Babbitt’s main Jackson Hewitt office is located, and although they were lucky enough to remain in business, they still had to recover from damages.
“Hurricane Katrina left our office in six feet of water and with tons of useless paper documents that cost more than $6,000 to shred and dispose,” said Mr. Babbitt, President of 16 Jackson Hewitt locations. “This experience truly opened our eyes to the importance of electronically storing and managing our office files.”
In addition to combating Mother Nature, Mr. Babbitt’s offices face the challenge of completing approximately 9,000 returns in a season. With eFileCabinet, they are able to maintain each of those returns along with the necessary paper work associated with them. They keep client records for three years and bank information for five years. “That’s a lot of paper,” Mr. Babbitt commented. “We scan everything. We scan little pieces of paper that clients scribble on so they have every record they presented to us at tax presentation time.”
Along with being able to keep track of every document, they found that the ability to keep all documents in a central, easy-to-access location has improved the integrity of their business. “We have solved many issues this way,” Mr. Babbitt said. “A client may say their return was done wrong, but we can bring it all up and see if we made a mistake or if they are trying to fool us.”
