Looking to Create a Digital Office

Question

Looking for advice on a software system that can help eliminate the mountains of paperwork that rolls through my office on a yearly basis.  I hate doing paper filing and no matter how careful I try to be, it seems like I misfile several items each year, probably because I'm in a hurry.  Besides that, storing all these files takes up a large chunk of space in my office.  Having things stored securely on the cloud somewhere seems like great insurance if the unthinkable were to happen and everything was lost to a disaster.  Has anyone gone to a near paperless system?  If so, is it efficient and simple to control and manage?  Not overly expensive?  I'll take whatever opinions you all have.  Thanks!!

Answer

To all of you that scan files to be stored on the computer is there some clever way you name files and arrange folders to make retrieving things simple?

Answer

I scan and save files to my computer.

Folder structure is like: My Files/Cargill/2019/2019-12-10settlement.pdf

So under the “my files” folder I have a folder named appropriately for each company that I do business with, example I used above was Cargill.   Then under the company folder I have folders for the year (2019) then under that I would have the scanned documents saved by the date “2019-12-10-document name.pdf”

Answer

I save receipt pdf's with the name in a verdor, date (y-m-d format) and keywords of "what it's for" format so I can search for it easily. Then save it all in a cloud share drive - pick your favorite.

Answer

I use quickbooks, it has a feature when you enter an invoice, bill, deposit, write a check or about anything else’s you can attach a file to these transactions so when I enter an invoice from a vendor I scan it and attach it to the bill I enter in quick books and the toss it is the trash. Same with assembly sheets I attach them to the deposit I put in the register and so on then like mentioned save it and backup often I save my scans and backups files to google drive which is free for I think 15 gb and if you need more than that it’s onlyl like 99 cents a month, there is other options like Dropbox with is relatively inexpensive also and more I’m sure most can me put on phone and tablets and you can open your scans anywhere.

Answer

One thing I do is scan all my paper work to a PDF file.  I put a link to the Epson scanner that I use at the bottom of this post.  The software is intelligent enough to read the documents I scan to find a statement date then name the pdf with a unique file name that includes the date.  I have a folder system on my computer that separates all my documents by company name then subfolders by the year.   Once you scan and save the documents, if you feel like you don't need a paper copy any more, then just throw the paper copies away.   My yearly paper work that I actually keep has been cut in half.   MAKE SURE YOU BACK UP YOUR DATA!  I've used carbonite before, but I-drive is better in my opinion, and a bit cheaper.   www.idrive.com.

https://www.amazon.com/Epson-WorkForce-ES-400-Document-Scanner/dp/B01M4NANZ6/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3T8GA9PIZDTS1&keywords=epson+scanner&qid=1565027085&s=gateway&sprefix=epson+%2Caps%2C218&sr=8-3

Answer

Google Drive and Google Docs are your friend. You can share documents and never worry about hitting file>save or backing up your system. I’ve been in technology and office longer than I’ve been back to farming. Ask more specific questions and I’ll give you MY idea/opinion on solutions and they are just that, an opinion.

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