HP 5590 Scanjet Scanner

A couple of years ago I left my service business and went to work in an office. I was repairing coffee and espresso machines all day and carrying equipment in and out of accounts. I injured my shoulder so much that even with surgery, my doctor said I had to stop picking up heavy items repetitively. I decided to get a job doing accounting for a company who designs and builds casinos and hospitality resorts.

The company I work for has a quarterly goal program that every employee must participate in. We all set goals with our supervisors to allow us to grow and gain more skills. There are only so many things an accountant can do for goals so three years ago, I made a goal to turn the finance department as paperless as possible. A co-worker and I came up with a way to be able to attach scanned documents such as invoices from vendors to their respective record in the accounting software. What made this process really great was that when someone called on the phone regarding a payment on an invoice, we could instantly pull up a scanned copy and see the invoice in question. After a year of scanning and attaching documents we were able to reduce our staff since the process was so stream lined.

I started the paperless at home about a year and a half ago and it has made finding documents, warranties and other paperwork so much easier. I boarded my dogs this past weekend at a new kennel and they required copies of the vaccination records. I just went to my computer and printed out copies in a few seconds. It was so much easier than having to go to the veterinarian a half hour away and wait while the staff printed out the documents.

One thing I want you to remember before you start going paperless. Not all documents should be scanned and then tossed or shredded. This is really important and you need to check with your accountant and your attorney before you begin the paperless process since certain documents must be kept as originals. I don’t want you to accidentally throw something away that should have been kept. I know for sure that you need to keep original tax documents, deeds, licenses, etc. Usually there is no reason to keep original receipts unless the warranty requires it (like some furniture and appliance purchases).

I will go through the steps I take to keep the amount of paper stored to a minimum. The first thing you need to do is get a scanner and software that can save documents as .PDF. Adobe Systems invented the Portable Document Format (PDF) which lets you capture and view robust information — from almost any application, on any computer system — and share it with virtually anyone, anywhere. Most scanners have software bundled with them to create PDF documents. The scanner I use at work is a Fujitsu ScanSnap. This is a rather pricey unit but it works really fast. At home I have a Hewlett Packard HP Scanjet 5590. I paid about $200 for it on sale and what I like about it is the ability to use a document feeder or a flat bed to scan documents. The document feed can hold multiple pages so you can set a stack of papers on it and press scan and the pages automatically feed through the system and get scanned. The flatbed feeder is great for small receipts that can be laid down on the glass and scanned individually. I know it’s a large investment but the time and space it can save makes it worth it.

Your Daily 15 – Before you can begin scanning, you need to set up a personal digital filing cabinet. On your desktop, create a folder called File Cabinet. In that folder create one folder for each letter of the alphabet. Create a folder for each member of the family and one for the pets. Create a folder for each credit card and for each bank account. Scanning the documents is only half the work, you must have a system to store the documents efficiently so that you can find them later without any time wasted.

Please let me know if you have questions or need any help with these steps.

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