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Archive for the ‘Benefits’ Category

OfficeDrop: One of “20 Ideas to a Better Life”

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Our goal here at OfficeDrop is to make lives easier by providing a simple solution for document scanning and document management. We’re always happy to hear that we’re meeting that goal, so you can imagine how excited we were when we stumbled across an article by nationally recognized financial advisor, Alan Haft, who listed us #1 on his list of “20 ideas to a better life.”

His article, featured on cpa2biz.com, and alanhaft.com, emphasized the benefits of using technology to increase productivity and general business efficiency. In particular, Alan noted the benefits of the “paperless office,” which is the very business environment we promote.

Alan Haft is a frequently published financial advisor, has been featured on Fox Business News, and is the author of You Can Never Be Too Rich and The 10 Most Common Mistakes People Make With Their Money.

We would like to thank Alan for his support and positive feedback about our secure, effective document management service at a “reasonable price.” We couldn’t have asked for a better recommendation than his concluding line, “Go paperless and I can assure you that you’ll never go back again.”

Posted in Benefits, Customer Satisfaction, Document Management, Organization, Paperless, Small Business | No Comments »

Bulk Scanning Discount: Simplify Spring Cleaning With OfficeDrop

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Spring is just around the corner - a time of rebirth, renewal, rabbits, eggs (?), and of course, spring cleaning. We’re not sure why everyone decided spring was the time for cleaning - maybe to curb the excitement that stems from the culmination of winter - who knows?

If you find your office “celebrates” spring with an annual ritual of sifting through stacks of paper and ordering files in cabinets, we have a better, more permanent, way to handle your spring cleaning.

Bulk Scan your Paper with OfficeDrop (Discounted for Spring Cleaning)

Bulk scanning with OfficeDrop’s document scanning service is an easy way to get all your office documents organized online, and keep them that way. To help you celebrate spring cleaning, we are offering $20 off any bulk scanning order of $200 or more until the end of this month. If you’re going to be organizing your paper anyway, why not prep them for scanning and online storage where they can be filed, labeled and managed from any internet connection? All you have to do to prep your documents for online management is to attach documents of each category or label with a paper clip and label that stack. Then just pack them up in the pre-paid boxes we provide and mail them to our secure facility.

If you want, you can even send everything in no particular order in the box at all and organize it later from our convenient online portal. Once they’re all in the system, you can mail us your paper each month as if flows into your office. That way, come next spring, you’ll be able to enjoy the season knowing your documents are secure and organized with OfficeDrop.

How to get the Spring Cleaning Discount

Give us a ring when you place your order at 888-674-6493 and mention this spring cleaning discount. It’s that easy!

Remember, you must place and ship your order in March 2010 to receive this $20 discount, and your bulk scanning order needs to be over $200.

Posted in Benefits, Document Management, Events, Organization, Paperless, Pricing | No Comments »

WebWorkerDaily Spreads the OfficeDrop Word

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

OfficeDrop and our FreshBooks integration was recently written up in an article featured on WebWorkerDaily which can be seen here.

As we noted in a previous blog post, OfficeDrop can now be integrated with FreshBooks with the OfficeDrop-FreshBooks app. We are very excited about helping people with their online billing, and others are starting to take note of the convenience this integration provides.

For example, we recently caught the eye of WebWorkerDaily, a resource site which is part of the popular GigaOM network and provides tips, news, and guides for people in web-focused careers.

We were fortunate enough to be featured on WebWorkerDaily in a post by the talented Aliza Sherman, who explained the notable features of both OfficeDrop and the FreshBooks integration. We especially liked her real-world examples that noted the benefits of a graphic designer attaching images right to an invoice, or a freelance writer sharing drafts with clients so that they can see progress right from the bill.

Since WebWorkerDaily is a great resource for the digital workforce, we are proud to have our very own article to join the ranks of pieces geared toward promoting productivity and making online careers easier.

Thank you to Aliza and WebWorkerDaily for spreading the word about OfficeDrop and our new FreshBooks integration!

Posted in Benefits, Press coverage, Product Features, partnerships | No Comments »

Online Services Boost Small Business Profits

Monday, March 8th, 2010

In a recent study done by Microsoft found that small and mid-sized businesses have shown greater financial success when using hosted IT services (hey, that’s us). The study surveyed 3,193 small to medium sized businesses in Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. A.

Essentially, the survey asked small business owners how important IT was to their business. Once the businesses were broken into 4 sections of varying use of IT services, this data was cross-referenced with the financial earnings of those companies. The result of this comparison revealed that businesses with higher IT focus were more likely to have had increases in average revenue over 12 months! Conversely, businesses that utilized IT services less were more likely to have static or declining revenue averages in the same 12 month period.

Within the IT focused businesses, more than 40 percent of the businesses that use hosted or cloud technology saw an increase of 30 percent or more in revenue. Compare this to participants not using hosted IT, 90 percent of whom saw a profit decrease.

This is a very interesting find, though it is consistent with small business trends in SaaS and cloud computing. Using hosted services are more cost effective and practical in a digital world, so it is no wonder that businesses using these services do well since employees have more time and money to focus on increasing revenue.

That’s our goal at OfficeDrop - to save you time and money, specifically, by eliminating unnecessary costs stemming from the storage, management, and loss of paper. Manage your documents online with OfficeDrop and you too can benefit from hosted IT services. Learn about how cloud content management can help your small business take advantage of enterprise content management, at a fraction of the price by using cloud computing.

Posted in Benefits, Document Management, Small Business, cloud computing | 1 Comment »

Help Video on Using Folders

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

We have just published a new help video on how to use folders in OfficeDrop’s document management system. We think you’ll find that folders, plus our label and search features, provide a great way to keep your information and paper organized and quickly accessible!

Using Folders

The following list of steps will explain how to use folders:

From your OfficeDrop home page, you’ll notice a folder list on the left side of the interface.

Clicking a folder in the list will allow you to view all of the documents in that folder. If there is a plus sign next to a folder, you can click this to reveal subset folders within the main folder.

Creating a new folder

To create a new folder, click the button labeled ‘Actions,’ located at the top of the folder list. From the drop down menu, select ‘Create’ which is noted with a plus sign.

From there you will be asked to designate the hierarchical location of the folder known as the parent, and name the new folder. Choosing the parent will allow you to determine if your new folder should be a subset of an existing folder. If you wish the folder to stand separate, select ‘Root’ as the parent.

Once you’ve named your folder, click ‘Create’ and, your new folder now appears in the folder list.

For now, your new folder will be empty.

To move documents to your folder, you can either move a single document from its individual document controls, or you can check multiple documents from the list and move all selected documents.

Moving Documents

To move a single document, find the individual document controls in the gray area underneath that document, and click ‘Move to.’

You will then select an existing folder and click ‘Move to the selected folder’ to transfer the document. The document will disappear from view and move to the selected folder.

You’ll notice you can also create a new folder from this menu.

A document can only occupy one folder at a time, so if you move a document that is already in a folder, it will be relocated to the new folder you choose, not copied.

To move multiple documents, you can check each documents check box, located at the bottom left corner of the document snippet.

From here you will click the ‘Move to’ button at the top of the document list, which will control all selected documents. Follow the same protocol as moving a single document and all checked documents will be affected.

Moved documents will disappear from view, and move to the designated folder.

It is also possible to move documents from their full document views. After you’ve opened a document, find the document controls on the right side and use the ‘Move to’ button as described previously.

More Folder Actions

(more…)

Posted in Benefits, Document Management, Organization, Pixily | No Comments »

Small Business Tax Dates: W-2 and 1099 forms due January 31

Monday, January 18th, 2010

We know it isn’t fun, but staying organized for tax season can save you many hours of sorting through piles of paper and receipts come deadlines like January 31. It is usually recommended that you keep a number of categorized folders to keep all of your tax-relevant documents in check. With OfficeDrop’s online document manage system, you can do just that, except without the sharpie and paper folders. Assign digital folders and labels to keep all of your tax info organized in one electronic storage.

Scan wage records for the W-2

The W-2 form, used to return information about wages paid to employees is required of employers by January 31^st. If you have a number of invoices or other documents relating to employee expenses, they can be easily scanned and organized with OfficeDrop. Once they are in your OfficeDrop account, you can organize them with labels, folders, and search all documents - giving you instant access to the resources you need for a W-2 form.

Scan non-employee invoices and more for the 1099

Also due by January 31^st, the 1099 form requires information return of many expenditures besides employee wages. Information required includes: Subcontractor payment, healthcare payment, royalties, rents, and attorney fees. That’s a lot of information, so it’s imperative that you keep it all organized, and in one place. This can all be done on your OfficeDrop account.

OfficeDrop makes taxes easier

Our online document management system makes it simple to organize your tax documents, and keep them organized. Our mail-in system allows you to mail us your documents securely, and we will do all the scanning for you. Scan receipts, invoices, bills, and organize them from your account anywhere the internet is accessible. If you are uploading files already on your computer or in your email, you can now upload those documents directly to a folder or labels you have made.

If you are making tax decisions, you should consult your tax advisor since the rules change often and may be different in your are. We aren’t tax attorneys or tax advisers, so make sure you are getting the right advice for your situation.

Posted in Benefits, Taxes, document scanning service | No Comments »

New Feature: Duplicate Notification

Friday, January 15th, 2010

We have found that during the uploading and scanning process, people sometimes submit multiple copies of the same document, or submit a document that has been scanned previously. Whether this is intentional or by accident, duplicates can clutter your document list, and take up excess storage. For this reason, there is now a way to see when duplicates are submitted on your OfficeDrop online account.

The New Duplicates Tab

From your ‘Inbox’ tab, which shows current uploads, Users will now see a ‘Duplicates’ tab. When the system senses an upload that already exists in storage, it stores it under the duplicates tab before it is processed. In the duplicates tab, the user is shown which documents are suspected to be duplicates, and which existing documents they are a duplicate of. Documents are suspected duplicates if the user, name and size coincide. The user can then review both documents, and choose whether the suspected duplicate should be processed anyway, or deleted.

Just one of the many ways OfficeDrop keeps you organized. Feel free to leave any questions of comments below.

Posted in Benefits, Product Announcements, Product Features, Product Updates | No Comments »

Document Scanning Made Easier With Labels

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

Save Time With OfficeDrop: Label Your Documents

OfficeDrop is happy to announce the release of another tutorial video, which demonstrates how to use labels within your online OfficeDrop account. OfficeDrop provides you with many ways to keep your documents organized and easy to find online. The labels system lets you assign any number of label tags to each of your documents, allowing you to narrow your document view later. By labeling documents, you only have to see the documents relevant to what you need them for. *See the demo for more in-depth descriptions and examples.

At OfficeDrop, we want you to be able to work with your documents easily and effectively once you have scanned them. Organization tools like labels are there so that our customers can get the most out of document scanning by saving time, and boosting productivity. After all, what good is scanning a document if you can’t find it when you need it?

See the video below for a complete walkthrough.

Recap: OfficeDrop Online Document Management - Using Labels

To navigate labels and narrow search results, click the check box of each label to limit the list view to documents containing that label name. Checking multiple label boxes will further refine your view, while un-checking labels will broaden the list view to documents without those label names. See the ‘displaying” tab at the top of the list to see which labels you are viewing.

To apply a label to a single document, click the ‘apply label‘ button under the document’s snippet. From here you can either choose from existing labels, or create a new one.

To apply a label to multiple documents, check all the documents you wish to apply the label to, and use the ‘apply label‘ button located at the top of the list. You can also choose existing labels or create new labels from this menu.

To delete a label, click the ‘x‘ that appears after that label name. Deleting a label won’t delete any documents, but one click will delete the label without a prompt, so be careful.

We hope this tutorial has been helpful. Please leave a comment or contact us with any questions or comments.

Posted in Benefits, Document Management, Organization, Product Announcements, Product Features | No Comments »

Top free and low priced sales and marketing SaaS tools for small businesses

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Now that small business SaaS is becoming mainstream, powerful marketing tools can be utilized to build a productive, cost effective marketing strategy for your small business. Five years ago when I worked for a big company we used multi-million dollar tools to track and manage our pipeline. Today, there are plenty of SaaS applications to oil your sales and marketing machine - a lot of them cheap if not free. Here are some of the best SaaS apps we have found for running sales and marketing:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the free web analytics tool we use to track site usage to our website. Of course it does the basics like showing us how many visitors we’ve had recently, but it also provides deeper intelligence into the sources of our traffic (from search, links and paid advertising). In addition, it shows us which of our traffic sources, landing pages and blog posts are resulting in actual closed sales and real leads. This is one of the first things I check when I get into the office in the morning.

Zoho CRM

We recently switched from Salesforce to Zoho CRM because Zoho allows for the creation of more online forms at a lower price point. Since we are an online-based business, and have a number of white papers and domains that we run, we need many different ways for potential customers to communicate their needs with us online. Zoho also does the basic blocking and tackling you’d expect in a CRM, allowing note-taking on leads, status updating, report generation, etc. Again, cheap and it’s working well for us. Zoho CRM is free for the first three users.

OfficeDrop

Of course we use our own cloud based service! OfficeDrop helps paper intensive small businesses manage their paper and digital files by scanning and hosting the scanned documents in an online management system. I use OfficeDrop for two major purposes: one, to store + share all of our press, and two, to manage our marketing expenses. Every time I get an invoice or receipt I upload, scan, or email it into the “Marketing” folder in our OfficeDrop account. For example, if I have a bill from Vistaprint for brochures we printed I’ll email it into the 2009/expenses/marketing/December folder. Then, our accountant logs in at the end of the month and can easily see all of our expenses from a single place, making book keeping simple, and making it easier to calculate the ROI from our different marketing campaigns. OfficeDrop is also inexpensive. Pricing for digital plans starts at $4.95/mo and for paper plans starts at $14.95/mo.

Wordpress

We run multiple blogs (blogs are the greatest, easiest way to communicate with our customers), and having a simple blog publishing solution like Wordpress is important. Since there is no limit to the number of writers we can have in the system, our product people and our marketing people can all create and edit each other’s content, and we can set up a simple publishing schedule. Since our main OfficeDrop blog drives about 15% of our sales conversions, it’s well worth the effort. Oh yeah, and the price - in addition to the software being free, the hosted version is also free.

CoTweet

Yes, we are on twitter, and we’ve recently started using CoTweet. It’s an application that allows multiple users to share the same twitter user name (in our case @pixily). Cotweet allows us to see what our last few tweets were easily, so that the marketing team doesn’t send out an overlapping message that the CEO just tweeted from the @pixily account.

Grasshopper

Grasshopper is a VoIP service that we have used to put our sales team in contact with customers. We’ve got our toll- free number on the top of our home page because it’s important for our potential customers to know they can easily contact us. Grasshopper enables us to project that big, solid company feel with dedicated extensions for each salesperson and custom recorded greetings and department forwarding. Above all, it’s a professional and cost effective way to put customers in contact with your sales team. Pricing starts at $9.95/mo.

ProvideSupport

Provide Support is the application we use for customer service, but it is equally utilized for sales and marketing. Provide Support is a great way to install a ‘chat with me’ button. On our website there is a ‘chat with me’ button that puts users in contact with a human being in the case they have any questions about the service prior to signing up. This is a cheap and easy way to engage customers via your website and we highly recommend it. Pricing starts at $15/mo.

ConstantContact

We aspire to the “touchless” sales model, which requires some pretty sophisticated email management. ConstantContact has been great for us, both in terms of functionality and price, although I imagine it would also be great for a company running basic email campaigns. For me, the best part about this service is that I was able to login and within a few minutes started sending emails - it was that easy to use. Pricing starts at $15/mo.

With the advent of low priced SaaS marketing solutions, small businesses can now manage their sales and marketing pipeline just as well as large competitors. The best part of these tools is that you usually don’t have to install or maintain any software or equipment. While large companies have legacy tools, into which they invested hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars, small businesses can nimbly shift to the best solution. I’d encourage you to take advantage of the free trials offered by most of the SaaS solutions mentioned above. I think you’ll find that many of them will make you more productive and enhance your customers’ sales experiences.

What SaaS tools do you use to run your business? Let us know by leaving a comment.

Posted in Benefits, Entrepreneurship, Home Office, Marketing, Small Business, discussions | 6 Comments »

Paper Management Tips for the New Year

Friday, January 1st, 2010

Get ready to face 2010 with a cleaner desk and better organization through smart document management and better paper management. Here are some easy tips you can use to start the New Year off right by taming your paper problem.

Use the New Year as an excuse to purge. Do you know what all of those folders are? Are any a surprise or just plain old? Throw them away if you don’t need them.
Learn from your failures. Do you have a pile of paper somewhere on your desk or floor that has been slowly growing? That’s a “fail” to properly manage your documents. Go through the pile and look for patterns – are any similar items piling up? If so, you probably need a folder or special storage space for that type of document.
Move files you don’t need regularly to more long term storage. If space near your desk is precious, archive-able items to make room for documents you need every day.
Consider going digital! At OfficeDrop, we always encourage small businesses and home offices to go paperless by going digital. You might be a good candidate for going digital if you:
- Need to access your documents from multiple locations, such as your home office, office office, customer sites, etc.
- Lose documents or need document backup. Since OfficeDrop will scan your paper and store it securely on the cloud, you will never lose your paper again!
- Love search engines for finding information. Since going digital with OfficeDrop allows you to text search within your paper, it’s like a search engine for paper. If you are a search engine junkie then digital paper may be the thing you need.
- Constantly share paper documents. Do you need to collaborate with other people but find that copying and distributing paper documents is too cumbersome? OfficeDrop’s secure share allows you to let anyone see your paper and digital files but gives you the control to revoke access at any time.

If you are ready to go paperless, checkout OfficeDrop’s pricing plans.

Happy New Years!

Posted in Benefits, Document Management, Organization, Paperless, Paperless Champions | 1 Comment »