5 of the Easiest Ways to Take Your Office Paperless
It’s 2019, and we’re all familiar with the concept of the “paperless office” – everyone using computers and mobile devices, software and apps, in a way that renders even the smallest slips of paper pointless.
It’s mostly a myth, of course. Whether it’s because of external client needs, marketing necessity or just plain expense to implement paperless solutions at every level, the completelypaperless office is a rare bird, especially at the small business level.
And that’s OK. No business needs to go 100% paperless to enjoy both the cost and time benefits of digitization. With just a few easy steps, you can knock out several antiquated practices and begin seeing price savings, as well as just plain ol’ convenience, within days.
Here are five ways to begin taking your office paperless:
5 Paperless Office Tips
1. Scan: Scanning receipts and bills, rather than filing them away with additional paperwork, is an excellent and easy way to start cutting out the paper. Accounting apps, such as QuickBooks, allow you to take a picture of a sales receipt, then attach the digital copy to the related expense filing within the software. You can also attach scanned receipts to invoices.
2. Collaboration Tools: Google’s productivity suite, which includes services such as Google Docs (similar to word) and Google Sheets (similar to Excel), allow you to create, view and edit live documents online without ever having to print a sheet of paper. Microsoft Office 365, Slack and Skype are other such programs that allow workers to collaborate internally, online, without needing paper. But even if you don’t want to spend a dime or 10 seconds on downloading collaborative tools, you probably don’t need to – simply sharing documents such as Excel and Word via email can help you cut down the paper waste.
3. Get an E-Signature: One of the hardest lines for some businesses to breach is the signed document; there are certain things that simply need pen to paper for approval. That said, thanks to the ESIGN Act of 2000, electronic signatures are perfectly valid. The key is getting over the psychological hump … and the technological one. Per the latter, there’s plenty of software that has you covered, including DocuSign and HelloSign, that allow everyone in your business (and vendors and external customers) to add their John Hancock with the click of a mouse.
4. Ask Your Customers and Vendors to Go Paperless: One way to deal with less paperwork is to have less paperwork sent your way. Even if you’re in the midst of a paperless-office transition, some of your customers and vendors might not be in the same place. But it’s worth at least asking for things such as invoices and purchase orders to be sent in PDF or other electronic formats via email, rather than mailed in paper format.
5. Ask the Pros: Implementing a paperless office can be difficult whether you’re an office of 1, 100 or 10,000. The flip side? It can save you literally thousands of dollars each year, from paper to machinery wear and tear to even mistakes made thanks to human error in the accounting process. McManamon & Co. is a full-service accounting and consulting firm that can help small and midsize businesses with myriad money matters, and that includes digitizing the office to make your company leaner and meaner.
Call McManamon & Co. at 440.892.9088 or contact us online, and we can start the steps to taking your office paperless, including a comprehensive on-site evaluation.
Tags: McManamon, paperless office, small business | Posted in paperless office, small business