A paperless office utopia

Over the past year we have been moving towards the goal of a paperless office. This will not only save us storage space it will also help the environment. I thought I would share some of the applications we have been using to reach our paperless utopia!

When running a business we all receive and store a large amount of paper work. Most of our paper work is relating to our business accounts, bank statements, invoices, receipts. Plus the tax man requires that all this paperwork is retained for at least 6 years! So that is a lot of box files and large folders requiring storage for each financial year.

So I started by streamlining our book keeping to reduced the amount of paperwork we generated and received. The first step was to find a book keeping and accounting solution that would eliminate the need to keep paper copies of invoices, receipts, etc. After testing a number of solutions both online and computer based the clear winner for me was FreeAgent Central.

It has been one of the best business decisions I have made, it has turned the companies accounts from a chore to a (dare I say it!) enjoyable process.

Now client invoices are created within FreeAgent and emailed to the client, no need to print and pay the ever rising postage costs (and wondering if they even arrived at all!). Bank statements are downloaded from the bank and credit card websites, they are then loaded into FreeAgent for reconciliation. Purchase receipts that are supplied as pdf files are uploaded and attached to the correct transaction. Any paper based receipts received are scanned in and then attached. HRMC are happy for companies to keep most company documentation in a electronic form as long as it remains legible. All the data that passes between my computer and FreeAgent is encrypted and backed-up off-site every 15 minutes. I will elaborate on the features of FreeAgent accounting software in a future blog post.

Another tool which I use regularly to keep the book keeping paper clutter to a minimum is Dropbox. Because FreeAgent allows me to update my accounts wherever I have access to a computer I needed a storage tool that would do the same. That’s where Dropbox comes in, with free or paid plans depending on your storage requirements. I use Dropbox to store copies of our bank and credit card statements, plus scanned and emailed pdf files of receipts ready to be attached to the transaction in FreeAgent. These files are then synced to my home/work computers, mobile devices and the Dropbox website. So I always have access to these files wherever I am working, and they are protected by the same secure methods used by banks and military. Dropbox has also replaced the many USB drives I previously carried around.

Here is a round-up of the key benefits of going paperless:

• Save money and the environment, buying less paper and toner/ink
• Save money by emailing documents and avoiding postage costs
• Protect your company documents from fire or water damage
• Save office space, no need to store large file boxes or folders
• Improve productivity by being able to work wherever you are
• Easy to create multiple backups of all your important documents