Simplify your life, today!

There are two pieces of office equipment that everyone should own:  A high speed scanner and a high security shredder.

Put them right next to each other.  Better yet, put the shredder right below the scanner and figure out a way to have the scanner feed directly into the shredder feeder.  Want to make a billion dollars?  Create a device that does both and call me.  I'll beta test the device.

For the scanner, my recommendation is a Fujitsu ScanSnap.  There are several models and the same basic model is marketed by a few manufacturers.  I don't know if it is the same machine but they all look and perform alike if you ask me.  The other day my daughter had a minor surgery in the hospital.  Every workstation had some version of this scanner on the desk.  They scanned everything; my driver's license, insurance card, and admission paperwork.  Why do we have to fill this out when we get there, anyway?  Why don't they send the paperwork the day before and let me fill it out online?  But I digress.

This scanner costs anywhere from $200 - $1,000 depending on the model and features but all have the same basic functions:  They all have at least a 25 page sheet feeder, all scan pages 8 1/2 inches wide with varying lengths but handle almost anything smaller, all scan full duplex, all allow you to customize several different defaults for file save format and location, all come with Adobe Acrobat, and they all have a setting to automatically OCR (Optical Character Recognition) documents.

For the shredder I have no intelligent recommendations.  I have not yet found the shredder that I can't live without.  I refuse to spend more than $200 on a scanner so that might be my problem.  I have a small one in the kitchen that was free after rebate at office max that I use for junk mail and a big one in my home office but it doesn't really handle enough pages at a time to make me love it.

What you want to do, is everytime you walk into the house scan every piece of paper you have.  Sort through the mail.  If it's junk, throw it in the shredder; if it isn't junk, throw it in the scanner and then shred it.  If you aren't sure if it's junk, scan it!  We can delete it later.  Everything you scan should be saved to a temp file which you can go through at your liesure.  If you are smart enough to OCR everything before you save it you never have to file it.  It's amazing how good OCR has gotten in the past five years.  Google or MS Desktop search will help you locate any document in an instant.  If you want, and I do strongly suggest that you do, go through the docs using Adobe to file them in the appropriate places on your computer.  You'll need the writer for this which will come with your scanner.  The free reader that came with your computer will not allow you to edit a document in any way.  Unless you intent to create fillable forms or type directly onto a document you don't need the professional version of Adobe.  After a few days you will get very good at manipulating documents and you seriously will not know how you lived without Adobe.

If you need any help selecting the correct equipment or getting set up give me a call or shoot me an e-mail.  I'll be happy to help.

Marc
http://www.marcbpetrinecpa.com/