These days, there are a number of different way to go paperless. Of course, OfficeDrop is one of them, but in this video, Josh Zerkel, a Professional Organizer in San Francisco and founder of Custom Living Solutions, outlines the different options you have when going paperless.
Josh outlines the different types of scanner available, the power of OCR, online backup, text-search, different online applications and mail-in scanning services.
Web how-to blog, MakeUseOf.com, recently polled their readers with the question “Are you paperless?” Obviously our ears perked up to this since the results could tell us the general reception of the concept on which our company is based.
The results came back (pictured below) and we were actually pretty excited about the outcome.
Why should I be paperless? I don’t care. 8% (23 votes)
Yes 100% paperless. I get all my bills online.23% (65 votes)
I am trying. I have gotten more than half of my bills to stop sending snail mail. 50% (138 votes)
I think I might try to go paperless in the near future. 14% (38 votes)
What do you mean by paperless? 5% (13 votes)
Total Votes: 277
As you can see, the majority answer is that people are working towards a paperless environment which, for us, is a best case scenario.
It shows that people are open to the idea of going paperless, but they are hesitant to get started. OfficeDrop helps with this by providing an easy way to start reducing paper in your office. Since we do all of the scanning for you, our mail-in submission system replaces hours spent scanning with a quick trip to the post office.
Congrats to those who have eliminated paper altogether, and as for those of you that are trying to get there, keep fighting the good fight. Going paperless yields a mountain of benefits, and isn’t nearly as hard as you might think. If you’ve hit a wall trying to get paperless, we encourage you to try our document scanning services which is sure to simplify your conversion process, and get you managing digital documents online in no time.
Have you been wishing for a great deal on document scanning and document management? If so, consider your wish granted thanks to AppSumo.
AppSumo is best known for bundling a big pile of awesome web apps, throwing a mawashi on them, and selling it all at heavily discounted prices.
Now OfficeDrop is in the ring, and for a limited time you will be able to get 6 months of document scanning goodness for just $15 dollars. For just $15 you can get six months of our document scanning and document management value plan which includes one pre-paid envelope per month (for 6 months), and unrestricted digital storage access.
Also keep in mind that this is what AppSumo calls a snowball deal, which means the more people buy, the lower the price for everyone!
The offer isn’t going to last long, so take advantage of this giant AppSumo discount and start crushing your document problems today. Also please note that this offer is only for new OfficeDrop customers.
Have you ever spent your workday hunched over a messy filing cabinet, hunting desperately for a piece of information you aren’t even sure exists? Imagine that same workday spent sitting in a comfy office chair, text-searching and then paging through all your documents from the effortless Multi-Touch display of the iPad.
Doesn’t that sound nice? It’s only a download away with OfficeDrop’s new iPad application. Yep, OfficeDrop is making document management easier than ever before with our new iPad app, OfficeDrop – Paper To Go (*see screenshots below). Do everything you can do on OfficeDrop from the rich graphic display of the iPad. With just a few touches of the screen you can:
Those are only some of the OfficeDrop features you can enjoy from the comfortable, portable iPad, and with your OfficeDrop account, you’re backed with our document scanning service to ensure your new paper documents also become iPad-accessible.
Our new iPad app is ready and waiting on the iTunes store so you’re just a quick download away from finding any document you want from any place you want (especially that comfy chair).
Web-Based softwares and applications have been reshaping the way startup companies do business. They lower costs, improve productivity, and allow employees to work from any internet connection. For these reasons, it’s no wonder so many startups utilize Google applications in their day-to-day operations. Not only are most of them free, but Google apps like Gmail and Google Docs make sharing and organizing information a nearly effortless task.
That’s why we developed the ScanDrop scanning software and our link to Google Docs feature, allowing users to finally bring the information on their paper documents to the convenience of Google Docs.
If you’re not already using Google Docs for your business, it is worth a look. Here are 3 reasons Google Docs is a great choice for editing documents online.
Easily the greatest advantage of Google Docs is the allowance of multiple employees to access and edit the same documents from any internet connection. Google Docs thus brings every concerned party to the same platform, and edit history keeps everyone on the same page. Spreadsheets are particularly helpful, allowing a grid of dates and schedules that can be updated instantly. In addition, individual documents can be shared via email, and viewing and editing access can be limited, boosting accessibility while preserving your documents’ security.
One problem with digital documents is that they tend to reproduce at an alarming rate – especially when being edited by multiple parties. If many different edits are involved, you can easily find your desktop and email being crowded by multiple versions of the same document. With Google Docs, the same document can be edited in one space by multiple people, so you never need more than one file taking up room. If necessary, you can save multiple revisions and keep them on Google Docs, not your desktop.
Obvious but important, Google Docs is a free application. You don’t get much more cost effective than that, especially with an application as functional as Google Documents. By operating in Google Docs, you will find yourself saving money by increasing productivity, and lowering the volume of paper that continuously has to be printed and marked up for editing.
Google Docs is a great collaborative tool, and one we use ourselves as an organized place for co-workers to convene on any digital documents. With our ScanDrop scanning software and link to Google Docs featue, the same can be done with scanned paper documents as well. If you don’t already use Google Docs, we highly recommend it to any business that deals with information online.
OfficeDrop is teaming up with organizational mastermind, Josh Zerkel, to bring you two free webinars to teach you how to go paperless and keep all of your documents organized. For seven years Josh’s company, Custom Living Solutions, has been helping people optimize their workspaces so that they can lower stress, be more effective, and minimize costs.
With this single registration, you’re signed up to benefit from these two informative webinars:
In this webinar we outline the many benefits of the paperless office and tell you how to get started.
In the second webinar, we let you know how to get the most out of your paperless office, how to maintain low paper volume, and offer helpful tools to make everything easier.
If you manage a small business or home office, don’t pass up on this opportunity to learn everything you need to know about reducing paper and staying organized. Registration only takes a moment, so we hope you take that moment and that you join us July 15th and 29th.
You may have heard that OfficeDrop now links with Google Docs. You can see in our new snazzy video that it’s fast and easy to get text-searchable paper to Google Docs, or to link your digital files. Like what you see? Want to get step-by-step instruction how to do it? We’ve got you covered:
Now that you know how, you can sign on to OfficeDrop and start scanning paper to Google Docs as text-searchable PDFs.
For a full text explanation of the steps outlined in the video, click here.
Do you use Google Docs? Wish you could get the paper in your office into Google Docs? Welcome to OfficeDrop scanning services – now linked with Google Docs.
If you use OfficeDrop already, you know every document that goes into OfficeDrop becomes a text-searchable PDF file, and you are enjoying the benefits of using OfficeDrop’s mail-in scanning service. When you upload documents from OfficeDrop to Google Docs, they stay text-searchable – pretty handy since Google Docs can’t make documents text-searchable on it’s own. With OfficeDrop’s Google Docs link you can enjoy the versatility of Google Docs without sacrificing text search. It’s the easiest way to get paper into Google Docs as text-searchable PDFs. Follow this link to learn more and sign up: http://www.officedrop.com/google-docs-paper-management/, or visit our page in the Google Apps Marketplace.
OfficeDrop just released a new application feature that lets you automatically push the contents in OfficeDrop folders to your Google Docs account. What that means is that all of the documents in a linked OfficeDrop folder are automatically uploaded to your Google Docs, and any documents you later put into that folder are automatically uploaded as well.
No need to send an entire folder? No problem. The new Google Docs feature also lets you select individual documents to send to your Google Docs account. Just select the “More” dropdown menu from the snippet view and then you can “Send to Google Docs.” The OfficeDrop system will even let you pick which Google Docs folder you want the document sent to.
Step One: Authorizing OfficeDrop for Google Docs
Before you can start linking OfficeDrop folders and sending documents to Google Docs, you must first enter your Google account information and authorize OfficeDrop for interaction with Google Docs.
Linking and Accessing Folders
Linking folders to Google Docs allows you to scan documents to OfficeDrop folders, and have them accessible from your Google Docs account. When a folder is linked, OfficeDrop documents are uploaded to Google Docs, but documents are never removed from the OfficeDrop system as a result of this link.
*Please Note: Though documents in OfficeDrop will be sent to Google Docs, the link does not work backwards and documents uploaded to linked Google Docs folders will not appear in OfficeDrop.
Sending Individual Documents to Google Docs
In addition to linking folders, you can also send specific documents to Google Docs one-by-one. As with folders, these documents are simply made accessible on Google Docs, and they are not removed from OfficeDrop.
We have noticed some issues in the way Google Docs recognizes the scans pushed into Google Docs. We believe that this is because some PDFs are approaching the limits of how Google Docs is able to handle files. Issues we have experienced:
ScanDrop scanning software is OfficeDrop’s newest product and makes it easy to scan paper directly into Google Docs and other popular cloud services. Scan to Google Docs, scan to Evernote, Scan to Dropbox, scan to OfficeDrop, soon scan to gmail, scan to local disk – all without opening a browser. ScanDrop offers powerful PDF tools like preview, rotate, page reorder, delete, crop and more. When scanning to the cloud, add metadata like tags, labels, notebooks, and folders/collections.
Going paperless can certainly make things easier for you and your employees, but you aren’t the only one who benefits from a paperless office. Just as your life becomes easier by reducing paper, so will the lives of your clients. Here are a few ways reducing paper and going digital will generate benefits that your clients will thank you for.
Faster Responses
When it comes to resolving client issues, there’s a negative correlation between customer mood and time taken for resolution. Oftentimes, the answers to client questions depend on the location of a paper document, and it used to be that clients had to wait while you rifled through filing cabinets for their answer. In the paperless office digital documents can be searched and retrieved instantly. Going paperless lets you locate documents quickly, and a faster reaction to client needs will always be appreciated.
They Get Anywhere Access
Clients like to stay informed; sharing a collection of digital documents with clients will build trust and make them feel valued. Digital documents can be hosted online, so they’re accessible anywhere your client can find a connection.
Less Clutter
It sounds obvious, but going paperless lets you maintain client relations without sending them stacks of physical documents. Doing business online will save your clients’ desks from excess clutter and make them grateful that they work with your paperless business.
They Feel Safe
Once you can boast the enhanced security features of online document storage, your clients will be reassured knowing that their information is backed up, firewalled, and securely guarded in state-of-the-art data facilities. Not only does this make you look good, but you and your client can sleep easy without nightmares of lost or destroyed paper documents.
They Become Environmentalists
The paperless office certainly has “green” values, and more and more people are becoming environmentally conscious. Knowing that they work with a paperless company will make clients feel good about working with you and good about themselves.
So do yourself and your clients a favor and send documents to us. We do all the scanning, leaving you and your associates to enjoy the security and convenience of reducing paper and managing documents online.
You like your accountant right? Why not make his or her life easier by sending all of your expense records to OfficeDrop and having them uploaded to our secure online document portal? Storing and sharing records with your accountant makes bookkeeping easier and more efficient for a number of reasons.
A lot of people mail all of their records to an accountant, but that means you can’t reference them during that time. If scanned online with OfficeDrop, both you and your accountant can log in at any time and review any record.
Once you’ve scanned all of your receipts, bills, and otherwise, you can apply labels and folders that will let your accountant instantly see the month, year, and type of expense.
Once scanned into the OfficeDrop system, you will be able to search all of your documents with our search-engine-like search bar. If you have a question about a receipt from Staples, just type “Staples” into the search bar and BAM, OfficeDrop will retrieve all of the documents containing that word and even highlights where it appears.
With OfficeDrop your documents are stored securely online so you or your bookkeeper can access them from any internet connection.
Instead of sorting through paperclipped stacks of paper and struggling to read hand-written expense designations, your accountant can see all of your documents from a clean, friendly user interface complete with digital label and folder designations. That means faster bookkeeping, less confusion, and fewer mistakes.
So at the end of next month, once you’ve compile all of your expenses, think twice before you bomb your accountant with a shoebox of receipts. Consider the time and effort you’ll save for you and your accountant just by switching the mailing address to our secure document scanning facility. We’re happy to turn any accountant’s nightmare into a digital document dream.
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