Help Converting Offices to Paperless?

[Z400Racer37]

Hey guys,

I want to go completely paperless with my office starting this year, and I was wondering what the best software would be to do that?

My requirements for this software are:
It must be Mac compatible

Must sync with iPhone and iPad

Preferably would have cloud storage available

Possibly would allow for two (or hopefully even three) folder layers before hitting the actual document layer.

My goal here is to ultimately not only convert my office to paperless, but also convert all of my clients to paperless as well. i would love to be able to get their operations to that level of efficiency!

Any help that you guys could offer, especially personal experiences with software, would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

 

[flynz4]

Hey guys,

I want to go completely paperless with my office starting this year, and I was wondering what the best software would be to do that?

My requirements for this software are:
It must be Mac compatible

Must sync with iPhone and iPad

Preferably would have cloud storage available

Possibly would allow for two (or hopefully even three) folder layers before hitting the actual document layer.

My goal here is to ultimately not only convert my office to paperless, but also convert all of my clients to paperless as well. i would love to be able to get their operations to that level of efficiency!

Any help that you guys could offer, especially personal experiences with software, would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

I use DevonThink Pro Office. It is fairly pricy (~$170) but when I was researching... most people recommended it over others.

It works flawlessly with my SnapScan S1500M scanner (about $400). Now, I scan any paper that I would normally file except for official documents with official legal seals. Actually... I scan those too, but they are the only things I move to a real file cabinet.

There are IOS apps available... but they are limited in scope right now, but from the president's blog, I believe that it is a priority to make that broader.

It is VERY Mac compatible... in fact, it might be only Mac.

You can have lots of folder layers... plus lots of tagging... and the search is incredible. I am not even sure why I file things away within Devonthink since the search is so good.

When you scan documents, it goes through an OCR process on its way into Devonthink. DT also use artificial intelligence... and I think that it will eventually do smart filing for you... but I have never done that, nor have I looked at it in detail.

If you haven't chosen a scanner yet, I would strongly recommend the ScanSnap S1500M. It comes bundled with Adobe Acrobat... and is full duplex (scans both sides at once)... plus it auto straightens crooked scans, it removes blank pages... auto rotates so that the pages are always right side up... and it is fast. You put a stack of paper into it and it devours it.

That is my recommendation. ScanSnap + DevonThink

/Jim

 

[miles01110]

My goal here is to ultimately not only convert my office to paperless, but also convert all of my clients to paperless as well. i would love to be able to get their operations to that level of efficiency!

I'd be careful with that one. If an outsider came in and started trying to get me to change well-established ways of operating, they'd no longer have me as a client.

 

[vitzr]

Hey guys,

I want to go completely paperless with my office starting this year <snip>

My goal here is to ultimately not only convert my office to paperless, but also convert all of my clients to paperless as well. i would love to be able to get their operations to that level of efficiency!

Paperless is impractical in the context of your post. Save yourself from peril worry about your business & leave your clients to theirs.

Paperless is a dream of many and a nightmare for even more. Talked about for years, you may find you're getting in over your head.

Raise your businesses bottom line and you'll be the one that benefits.

 

[robgendreau]

Seriously, unless you generate only a couple of documents a day this is a rather simplistic request. We'd have to know at least what your business is and what kind of documents you generate, who has to see them, etc.

Better to ask for a referral to a consultant who can help you out, or go to a site where Mac users in your field congregate. Good luck; it can be a tough project.

Rob

 

[Big D 51]

Palpatine (user name may be spelled incorrectly bc I'm on phone) is an expert with this. Search the forums for his thread regarding this subject. If you can't find it, I'll post the link when I get home later today.

In short, I'm using a combination of Dropbox and Evernote to go paperless. So far, it is working great.

Wish you the best of luck.

 

[Z400Racer37]

thanks very much everyone

 

[MetRob24]

I'll suggest NeatReceipts for what you're looking for.

 

[sandimacd]

My goal here is to ... also convert all of my clients to paperless as well. i would love to be able to get their operations to that level of efficiency!!

Great Idea! I have tried, from the Client standpoint, to go paperless but it is difficult for me to do so unless the business that I use also takes that approach.

THANK YOU. It is a real pain to have to scan in paper docs from institutions and businesses. I love getting them in PDF format. And for those clients that want to remain/return to paper, they will be able to print it to file or use a copy service for a collated end product to meet their needs.

I am interested to hear the suggestions and hope I can find a product that works for home management of all those files I have already scanned.

 

[sandimacd]

Elyse tagging software from silkwoodsoftware

I have spent the past 2 days searching for software to organize and manage my home files.

VueScann showed up in Forums. It seems to be useful as a starting point when scanning in so am giving it a go. Hopefully I won't spend so much time moving files from the scanned folder to where I want it stored. I am also scanning in photos and it is supposed to assist in that.

I could not find any search result for Elyse in these forums. It came highly rated on CNET so I just downloaded it from silkwoodsoftware.com. It appears to be a tagging database that relies on nodes, not file paths. This means I do not need to alter my current file structure system. The caveat seems to be that Elyse will require large amounts of space as the file is actually pulled into the Elyse database. For example, my 85 GB of current files will mean that the Elyse database is also 85 GB. The advantage is that it pulls files between Macs and PCs and the nodes work with a multitude of file types.

I am now wondering if it will allow me to tag my music collection which is housed in 7 libraries. It would be great to create more specific playlists than I can get using iTunes or perhaps even beaTunes. That would be a nice bonus!