Benefits of Paperless

• More Secure – Files are secured and can be remotely wiped if a machine is compromised. If our house, car and office burnt to the ground, we’d have full versioned copies of all our files.
• Less Money – Bottom line paper gets expensive to buy, print on, and store. Also if you need less square footage to store your file cabinets, you can lease a smaller office.
• Quicker Access – If you want a file the traditional way this means you need to get up, and locate where it is in a file drawer, folder etc. In a paperless office, I (or employees with access) can do a quick search and view all files. Windows Vista and up have a built-in search that makes this a breeze.
• Mobile/Backed Up – Do you work from home? Or on the road? Access your files anywhere, even on your droid or iphone.
• Better for the Environment – Of course, less paper means less resources and less clearcut forests. Read more reducing your footprint.
• Takes up Less Space – I am sure you can think of a few things that would enrich your life more than a file cabinet. Sell your file cabinets and buy a nice chair, pocket the money or add to your replacement fund
• Grant Partial or Limited Access – We have employees and others that need access to documents and files. Using the methods discussed, this is as simple as a few clicks. Of course everything is backed-up and versioned so if they delete something, no problem we still have it.

Read more on the Case for Paperless in this series overview.

Drawbacks

• Needs power to access – Chances are if you don’t have power, you won’t be getting much of anything done anyway. Backup power supplies are not terribly expensive for emergencies.
• Requires internet access for backup and mobility – If you want to reap all the benefits you will need a decent internet connection.

Can you imagine a life without paper? No stacks, no pockets of receipts, no office file cabinets, no stack of unopened mail. Here is the first step towards the goal of paperless.

1. Reduce the Incoming Stream of Paper

Evaluate all the mail you receive (yes all of it). Take a look at your inbox. Are there other ways you can get this information? We check the mail once a week and even that isn’t needed. If you want to stop the flood, you have to find another place for the water to go. This is the first step.

Most all bills you receive can probability be delivered in another format.

• Utilities
• Mortgage
• Bank Statements
• Magazines, Papers, Personal Letters
• Paychecks
• Are you still paying bills with checks?

2. Choose to Save rather than Print

Installing a PDF converter allows you digitally “print” things such as receipts or other documents. I use adobe acrobat professional, but there are free ones also, such as PrimoPDF.

Now that you can save your online receipts, you no longer need to print them! Every time you go to hit that print button, think about it. You may be able to save as PDF, send to a friend, email to your self or just save for future use, rather than printing, storing and organizing.

3. Credit Card Offers/Application

Do you get a dozen credit card offers a month? There are ways to stop this. Next time you get an offer, open it up and read it. Near the bottom of the offer, there should be a opt out phone number. Call this number and you will be prompted to verify you information. This will opt you out for a short time frame. This call also triggers you being sent a opt out questionaire (yes in the mail, ironically). If you fill out this questionaire, you will be officially opted out. I belive the term is 2 years for the mailed document.

There are many other ways to reduce the stream, but start with these and you will be surprised on how much less paper you have. Start looking at every piece of paper in life and ask the question: “How can I avoid this?”

Related posts:

1. The Case For Paperless

Is your desk covered with neat (or messy) stacks of paper? Do you find it frustrating to find documents in a file cabinet? Tired of having stacks of mail and paper clutter your life? Are you interested in simplifying your life and spending more time doing the things you love?

Here are just a few reasons to work towards eliminating the endless stream of paper.


Paperless is Safer
I have heard the argument that things online are unsafe. But we easily forget how unsafe a typical mailbox is. Which is easier to gain access to: a large national bank’s system or a typical mailbox in front of your home? Even a locked mailbox is easy to pick an offers little or no protection.

With paperless statements you won’t have files cabinets full of account numbers and other documents in your home for someone to rifle through. If you choose to save documents locally on your computer, look into password protection or other security in case your computer is compromised.

Paperless is Backup-able
If you are storing your bank statements and other paper mail in a file cabinet and your home robbed, burned or you simply misplace them, you are usually out of luck. However, with paperless documents you can easily setup a system for automatically archiving and backing up your important documents. Dropbox.com is my favorite backup and online storage service. (It’s free under 2gigs)

Paperless is Cheaper
You will spend less on storing and organizing all your paper statements and mail. You will also spend less on stamps mailing back all your payments. You won’t have to worry about running out of desk drawers or room in your office with electronic files either. If your office is paperless, you can even lease less space, or fit more desks furthering the savings.

Paperless Produces Less Waste
Take a close look at all the paper you toss after opening your mail next time. Inserts, junk mail and return envelops are all just extra wasted paper in most cases. If you are paying your bills the easy way, you won’t be sending in a good’ol check anyway.

Paperless Saves Time
I dread opening mail because I know that opening it is only the beginning. After I open it, I will need to file it, respond to it, and review it. If you are getting a lot of mail, you know how fast it can pile up. Try coming back from a vacation to a huge pile of mail. Now imagine coming back from a vacation with no mail at all to open! You may not realize how much time you spend processing mail, unnecessarily.

In addition, you won’t have to walk or drive to your mailbox daily (maybe once a week at the most).  You also won’t have to spend time sorting through old statements to locate one. A quick search on your computer, or online document site and you can find your document quickly.

Paperless is Faster
You get online statements immediately. You don’t have to wait for the post office, and online statements can come 24/7 rather than being restricted to the US Mail hours, holidays and routes. You have the ability to check your statements the day they are created.

Paperless is Mobile
Not only are you not tied to a physical location, you can check your online statements on the go. If you travel for any reason, you know how nice it can be to get some of the day-to-day busy work out of the way as you wait in an airport or hotel room. Use this time to review your statements etc.

Now that we understand the benefits of eliminating paper mail, how do we do it? Please check back for:

1. Paperless: Reducing the Stream
2. Paperless: Getting Started
3. Paperless: Managing the Digital Files
4. Paperless: Organizing/Backup/Sync
5. Paperless: Other Creative Ideas

Related posts:

1. Paperless: Reducing the Stream