Paper Trail Strengthens Document Security and User Access
Ask most organisations what matters in a document system and they will point to scanning and storage. Papertrail, the Johannesburg based enterprise content management provider, is using this September to make the opposite case: the features that decide how long a record survives, who is allowed to open it, and when it may lawfully be destroyed are the ones that get the least attention and carry the most weight. With South African businesses now working through the back half of the financial year and assembling files for audit and review, the company is positioning its Records Management module and its permission framework as the working solution to something that filing cabinets and shared drives were never designed to handle.
Trading as Egis Software and based at 138 Athol Street in Highlands North, the company has spent twenty years writing document and workflow software for South African organisations. Its own site frames the offering as enterprise content management paired with custom development, but the message this month is weighted toward governance rather than capture. Pulling a document into a scanner is simple. The harder and more valuable step is knowing that the scan now carries a retention period, that only three named individuals can view it, and that no one can quietly erase it ahead of its disposal date. That is the distinction between a digital pile of files and an archive you can defend.
Retention and disposal handled as configuration, not custom code
Inside the Records Management module, retention periods and disposal instructions are set up through configuration rather than written in code. An organisation that already holds an approved file plan is not forced to recreate it from scratch within the software. That existing plan can be brought in as a CSV, so the classification effort an organisation has already invested with its records manager or archivist arrives intact instead of being keyed in again and reinterpreted along the way.
Record declaration and record freezing are also managed here. To declare a record is to lock it as an official record rather than a document still in progress. Freezing holds disposal in abeyance while a matter remains open, which is precisely the position most organisations occupy when a dispute, an investigation or an audit query lands on a file that would otherwise have hit the end of its retention period. Disposal signoff forms part of the same sequence, which means a decision to destroy is logged rather than merely presumed.
Papertrail says it keeps electronic records in line with ICA and ISO standards, and that the module satisfies the records management requirements laid out for government, in step with the National Archives and Records Service framework. For public sector entities, and for the private firms that supply them, that alignment is not an optional extra. It is the price of entry for the work itself.
Permissions that reach down to the index level
The other half of the September message is about access. According to Papertrail, administrators hold absolute control over who can reach documentation, with permissions set at folder, document and index level. That final tier carries more weight than it first appears. Control at folder level is routine. Control at index level means a person can be shown a record set while particular fields inside it remain hidden, which is how a large organisation hands an operations team a file to work with yet keeps the sensitive detail attached to it out of view.
Access can be given, altered or revoked whenever needed, and the company says the effect is instant. Every authorised user has their identity verified at the moment they log in. For organisations that have expanded by acquisition, or that depend on contractors and outside parties, being able to shut an account and see that closure bite straight away is what separates a controlled environment from a merely optimistic one.
Signing works hand in hand with the permission model. Papertrail Sign caters for ordinary, digital, biometric and advanced electronic signatures, and the company states that signature compliance holds in terms of both the ECT Act and POPI. Anything signed inside the platform remains inside the same repository, bound by the same retention rules and the same permission structure, rather than drifting out of the system as email attachments nobody can trace half a year on.
Capture, workflow and the record that results
Sound governance rests on a complete archive, and the capture side of the platform supplies it. Papertrail automates bulk and online capture, adds image enhancement and full page or zonal optical character recognition, and handles form and barcode recognition with page separation that can be automated or done by hand. What comes out is a fully text searchable scanned PDF image, so a record governed by a retention rule can be located by what it contains rather than by whether someone recalls the folder it landed in.
Routing runs on rules. The platform lets organisations build rule based workflows for bespoke document handling and escalation procedures, with documents directed automatically to users or to external systems, built through a graphical workflow designer and run from an administration console. Papertrail puts the result as hundreds of working hours saved through process automation and task monitoring across every business unit, delivering a clear view of processes.
Continuity is treated as its own discipline. Papertrail sets out two replication and disaster recovery approaches. The first runs continuous two way replication between a master and a slave server, both with the application installed, giving the shortest achievable downtime and allowing disaster recovery testing without disturbing production, though it calls for two full licences and a heavier configuration. The second is a cold standby arrangement that copies the primary file store to a remote write once, read many repository, works with Amazon S3 and UNC path file stores, and asks only for a server licence billed as a monthly rental. The company makes clear that either route sits alongside a sound data backup strategy rather than standing in for one.
Where the records live in the wider platform
None of this governance layer exists on its own. It belongs to the same platform as LeaseHub for tenant and lease document handling, PeopleHub for employee lifecycle administration from recruitment through onboarding, CreditorsHub for accounts payable, TravelHub for supplier invoice collection and data extraction in the travel industry, Papertrail Sign for signatures, and the contract management offering with its workflow, approvals, renewals, addendums, controlled access and reporting. A lease, an employment file and a supplier invoice each come with their own retention obligations, and dealing with them inside one document management system means those obligations are enforced consistently instead of being left to each department.
Integration obeys the same reasoning. The Papertrail restful API lets any third party application tie into the platform, and plugins extend to MS Office, MS Explorer and a desktop upload agent, with Microsoft Office and Outlook integration and mobile access across iOS and Android. Records generated in a line of business system can be drawn under the same controls without asking staff to alter the way they already work.
The platform comes in Small Business, Standard and Enterprise editions, with cloud and on premise deployment and distributed operation modes on offer, so the identical governance model can serve an organisation of a few dozen users or one running high availability across multiple sites. Training and customised support come with it, including 24/7 support through a help desk for critical systems.
Among its clients Papertrail names IHS Property Management, Triton Fleet, CBI-Electric, iStore, Old Mutual, Fair Cape Dairies, the South African Reserve Bank, Tourvest Travel Services, PPC, Rosond, FirstRand Bank, FNB and Standard Bank, reaching across property management, fleet, electrical, retail, dairy, travel, manufacturing, mining services and banking. These are fields where retention schedules, access restrictions and audit readiness are everyday operational demands rather than once a year projects, and they are the settings around which the company's Document Management Software has been designed.
The larger movement the company is answering to is a recognisable one in South Africa. Organisations went digital at speed over recent years, frequently one module at a time, and finished with content scattered across scanners, mailboxes, network drives and cloud folders. Going digital on its own generated volume. What it failed to generate was governance. Pulling that content under one set of retention rules, one permission structure and one audit ready repository is the task that is left, and it is exactly the task that Document Management as a discipline exists to carry out.
Anyone wanting the finer points on the Records Management module, the permission structure, the editions or the disaster recovery options will find them on the Papertrail website at https://www.papertrail.co.za/.
About Papertrail
Papertrail is a South African enterprise content management and document management software provider, based at 138 Athol Street, Highlands North, Johannesburg and trading as Egis Software. For two decades the company has built document, workflow and records software for South African organisations, describing itself as smart software for smart businesses. Its platform spans bulk capture and optical character recognition, storage and retrieval, eForms, rule based workflow and routing, records management aligned to ICA and ISO standards, group email management, electronic and biometric signing under the ECT Act and POPI, business analytical reporting and a restful API for third party integration. Beyond the core platform it provides LeaseHub, PeopleHub, CreditorsHub, TravelHub, Papertrail Sign and contract management, available in Small Business, Standard and Enterprise editions across cloud or on premise deployments, with training and 24/7 help desk support for critical systems.
Media Contact
Papertrail
Email: support@egis-software.com
Phone: +27 11 880 4411
Website: https://www.papertrail.co.za