Many people, businesses, and organizations are making a concerted effort to go paperless. Personally, I have made a few runs at it, but have yet to go totally paperless. I do have much less paper around than I used to, though, and I love it. But is it really worth it? Let’s explore that first.
3 Reasons to Try Going Paperless
1. Less clutter. For many people, this is the biggest advantage. Those little notes, receipts, and sticky notes just pile up all around. Paperless living takes all of that away.
2. Better on the environment. Obviously, the less paper we use, the less has to be made. I am not an environmentalist by any stretch, but this is one thing I can do to help.
3. Better organization. This may seem strange, but you can only file paper in one location unless you make multiple copies, write on those copies the other places this same paper is stored, etc. In going paperless, you can tag notes as many ways as you want, so you can find those things anywhere.
Does Going Paperless Save Time and/or Money?
Going paperless takes time on the front end, especially if you decide to scan in all your existing paper. (Personally, I chose to keep most of my current papers “as is,” and just scan in new stuff.) But, once you have your system in place, you will be amazed at how much time you save, especially in retrieving files. No more digging through filing cabinets; you simply do a quick search, and there is your file.
As far as money goes, going paperless can save a few dollars here and there. It probably won’t change your retirement, but you might notice some subtle differences. Here are a few ways it can save you money.
- No more postage. If you use online banking, email statements, etc., you don’t have to worry about postage stamps, or trips to the post office, for that matter. With stamps getting ever-more expensive, this might really be a savings over time!
- No late fees. We have all probably had a late fee incurred, simply because we didn’t get a check in the mail in time. With online banking, you simply set it up, and autodrafts from your account on the date you specify. Set it up before the usual “due” date and you will never have another late fee.
- Less storage “stuff.” No more files, cabinets, trays, labels, etc.
- No paper! If you are going paperless, you don’t have to buy paper.
6 Tools to Help You Go Paperless
Now that you see just some of the benefits, here are some tools to use to go paperless.
1. Evernote.com. I cannot stress the usage of this product enough. Evernote lets you save documents, web clips, pictures, scans, pdfs, audio, and more. Then, it syncs all that data across any platform where you use the Internet. Best of all, it’s free. There is a premium version, but you would have to use it a lot (and I mean a lot) to need it. Put your notes in Evernote, tag them, and they are fully searchable. Here is an excellent index to all of Michael Hyatt’s posts on what you can do with Evernote. And be sure to check out Jonathan Milligan’s 21 creative uses of Evernote here on ChristianPF.
2. Dropbox.com (or another similar program). I am not a fan of Dropbox, except in rare instances (massive files, for example), but it does allow you to sync any file from your computer to any other computer.
3. A great scanner. I recommend the Fujistu ScanSnap s300, which is incredibly fast and can be set up to automatically put your scans into Evernote. I keep one file by my office computer. I put paper in there that I want to save, and when there is a lot, I just have a scanning party.
4. Google Docs (or another online document creator). Again, syncing is the key here, as you can create documents and sync them across computers, so you don’t have to print them out.
5. Online banking. Nearly every bank, no matter how small, has online banking. Many will even give you some perks for using email or web-delivered statements. The set-up takes a few minutes, but then your bills are paid and your statements come to you automatically.
6. Email. This may seem like a strange inclusion, but email can be used for many purposes that paper is. Instead of printing that short web clip to read to your kids, email it to yourself and read it from your phone or tablet.
You may never go totally paperless, but I recommend that you try it for an extended period of time. Give it three months, for example, and just see what you think. Like me, you may find that you need to use some paper, but that your life is a lot less cluttered with these computer-based and online tools.
What other tips do you have for going paperless? Leave a comment below!
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> 2. Better on the environment.
The other side of the coin is that all the data centers that hold your data in the cloud has to be running 24 hours a day. A lot of power is required to keep all the data up and running. While we are not cutting down as many trees, there is certainly a cost.
> 3. A great scanner.
Fujitsu is a great brand. I recall the military used Fujitsu scanners to digitize solider applications.
I personally use a Visioneer Patriot 430. It is a duplex color scanner. I scan documents as color PDFs and save them to DropBox. The OCR in the software is slow so I use do the OCR with Adobe Acrobat Pro later.
I would love to go paperless, but I don’t check email on a regular basis and without a paper bill coming in the mail I’m afraid it would get missed. I do use online banking so that part is paperless. The company I work for is trying to go paperless as much as possible. It saves a lot of time filing and a lot in storage fees.
I second the Fujitsu ScanSnap recommendation. I have the S1500M which is amazing. It performs duplex scanning and comes with OCR software, which runs quickly in the background. OCR is a must if you want searchable documents (OCR = Optical Character Recognition; basically it “reads” the content on the page and stores that information in the saved pdf, making it easy to search for using your Finder or Search bar).
Well, we long ago utilized our credit unions free bill on line pay service. It lists all the bills and due dates. It’s not automatic and the payee never has access to our acoount, we don’t do that with anyone. Once we assign a payment then the CU does the rest. PO service is so unreliable and over priced we where forced to find alternatives. Now we also fired the ma Bell land line and use Skype FREE audio/vidio service around the world online. As for cable they would have to pay us for 200+ channels of garbage in our home. Net Flix is on line and super cheap and we select what to watch with no comercials. Our cell phone is with City Market, a Kroger company store, free! No contracts and 20 min free with every 100 bucks in groceries or any other Kroger owned affiliate. We buy a phone card every couple of months. It took over a year for our cell to equal one months payment on vorizen. Start firing the duds! We live by a saying in our home ” compete or get beat “! I use this term every time I shop for anything from building materials to groceries. We ask the Manager do you want to sell this to me or does your competetor? ALWAY&S make an offer for less than asking price and walk away if the price doesn’t match what you think its really worth. We don’t have to have everything we see and “NO” is a good word!
No google also has google drive to store files in.
And for people who are using microsoft office there is google cloud connect to sync office files in the google cloud and makes it possible to share docs and collaborate. So the whole team can edit the same document.