Take a look around your office right now.  What do you see?  You probably see your computer, a few other computers, some desks, some employees, maybe a counter and some stock.  One of the things that you will see as well is piles of paper – piles that might not even notice anymore.  But what if you didn’t have to have the papers anymore?  What if you could remove the filing cabinets and the storage containers that are holding all of your important papers?

The Paperless Office Concept

Welcome to the idea of a paperless office.  When you remove the papers from your desks and your cabinets, you free yourself to actually move around, maybe even find what you’re looking for without shuffling through everything.  The paperless office is not such a far-fetched idea anymore either.  It’s something that you can accomplish quickly and easily, without spending a lot of money in the process.

Scan documents in 

What you need to do is start off by collecting the papers that you really need.  If you’re not sure if you need it, keep it anyways.  Try to find a way to organize them so that the next part of going paperless is easy.  You’re going to take these papers to my self-scanning service, use my fast scanner, and start to get rid of these cluttering pieces of your business.
 

To do this, you will place each paper individually (or through a paper feeder) on the scanner bed and scan the image.  This image will then be stored on the computer system that it’s hooked up to.  This image will then be converted to a pdf file that you can then store on slim CDs.  You can then toss the papers in the shredder and take back to your office a stack of CDs.  Isn’t that better?

Create a storage system

Just as you would with any file, the process of converting your office to paperless is creating an electronic file of the paper, saving it in a pdf format, and then storing it onto a CD.  And then, instead of papers, you’ll have a library of CDs that will be storing your important information – easily accessible and manageable.

That’s really all there is to it.  Just bring in your papers to the self-scanning service and start scanning.  This is a fast scanner that can handle high volumes of papers, so there’s no need to worry that it will take days to complete.  The system automatically converts the images into pdf files, so that if you need to reprint the files later, you can do so from your own computer – it’s really that easy.  You can also make copies of these CDs to store offsite of your business for further security.

No more worries about losing papers, fires, or other natural disasters – you’ve backed up everything and saved yourself some clutter in the process.

Handling incoming paperwork

When you already have your papers all neatly stored in pdf files and your office is starting to look like, well, an office again.  That’s all you have to do, right?  Unfortunately, conquering your old paperwork is one thing – it’s a certain amount that’s not going to pile up again. It’s the incoming paperwork that you’re going to get once the scanner has cooled that you need to prepare yourself for now.

Develop a system for processing work

The thing is that incoming paperwork is much easier to deal with when you already have the old stuff sorted end electronically filed.  There are several ways to deal with incoming paperwork.  You will want to establish some sort of system that will allow you to keep the mess from coming back.  This will need to be determined by just how busy you are and what kind of time you’re willing to devote to your new storage system as well as how you’re using the newly stored files.

Filing systems

First of all, if you’re not a particularly busy office, you may want to store files via scanning as soon as you get them.  This works out well for smaller offices and the self-employed.  Scanning a few pages here and there isn’t difficult and it can be done between other tasks.  You might want to keep a basket of ‘things to be scanned’ on your desk so that every time you have a free moment, you can scan the files that you want and then empty the basket.

When you’re a bigger business (two to five employees), you will want to have individual employees scan their incoming files so that everyone can have access to them, if necessary.  You can also have one person each day scanning files into the database in order to keep up with the flow of your paperwork.

Another consideration for your new system is telling those that you interact with of your plans.  While they don’t have to convert their own business systems, you will want to make sure that you are receiving electronic files whenever possible from them, in order to cut down on scanning time and expenses as well as unnecessary paperwork.  Have correspondence and business work come via email or other electronic means so that it can be instantly stored without turning into a pile of work.

Keep up the good work!

The point is that maintaining is a lot easier than starting off on the road to being paperless, but if you don’t have a system in place, that disorganized state can creep up on you more quickly than you’d like to admit.  The true goal of a paperless office is to keep the things that you need in an electronic format, eliminating the need for filing cabinets and messy desks.  But this goal can only be achieved if you’re taking care to make sure that your scanner never sits still.

This content was provided by one of our users, Jamos