Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How To Go Paperless At Home?
THE_WELL_HUNG_OYSTER writes "Over the years, I've had numerous scanners equipped with automatic document feeders — and all of them jam or grab multiple pages at a time (thereby missing pages). Like you, I've got years of tax returns and legal documents to scan, but with these kinds of barriers, it would take months to scan everything. Enterprise-grade machines cost 5 figures. How do Slashdotters become paper-free?"
Try using Evernote and scan as you go, keeping up on all current items. Do extra ones when you have the time.
-Myke
Find someone who'll rent one to you.
to China
A sheet-feeder duplex scanner that'll scan and OCR to a PDF. Drop in your year of bank statements, press the button, come back in five minutes. Scan your receipts, product manuals, whatever you actually use. Throw out everything else.
Lots of places will scan documents for you on professional-grade scanners, including your local Kinko's. Sometimes, you don't save money by trying to do it yourself -- like when you keep buying another cheap scanner at a couple hundred a pop to avoid getting it done professionally.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Consumer grade ADF scanners are toys.
You should be able to find a used one, like the Panasonic KV-S3065 for under $1000.
All those tax returns, legal paperwork... Can't they just stay on a box or at the basement? It'll require lots of work, and get few benefits. I would understand for new documents; i.e. introducing to a spreadsheet some taxes/things to pay. But why care about the past? Or, at least, why scan? Just type the figures, it'll be more semantic and wouldn't involve machines (except for you and the computer).
I don't know what ADF scanners you have tried, but I have been enormously pleased with Epson's GT-2500. With straightforward letter-sized/a4-sized paper it is very reliable, at least with the Windows software. Unfortunately, the Linux software calls jams all the time when they're not even physically happening.
I haven't used it much lately just because the photocopier at my office is even faster and allows me to dump scans onto an ftp account.
Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 totally rocks. I bought that refurbished for $250. Add in Yojimbo or Evernote and you'll be set. We've gone paperless in our office and at home, and this machine is the heart of that. We scan everything and shred it.
It's nice not having the paper around, but the BIG thing is not having to find it - it's always at your fingertips, searchable by document content or via the keywords in Evernote or Yojimbo.
How do you expect to be "paperfree" when almost the entire use of your paper has nothing to do with priting anything?
Most of paper is used for toiletpaper or paper towels or paper tissue.
So, how do you use those 3-shells??
Having worked in archives, I recommend you this kind of scanner.
hovercam.
ok, it's manual but nothing is as fast as this under 2k$.
This product is fantastic:
http://www.neat.com/
I use mine all of the time.
I used to fear clowns...but I'm discovering that chimps are far, far, worse.
I don't now seems I would still need TP at least.
I own a Fujitsu Scansnap S1500. It's worth the 400 bucks.
Hands down the best personal document scanner out there. It is fast, scans duplex, and outputs PDF files. My sister and I both own one. A client of mine also bought one on my recommendation, and the clinic I work at has one as well.
I work in a computer shop and I've set up numerous ADF scanners, none of which cost more than $3,000 and most of which were $1,500. They all seem to work great and I've heard no complaints of jams or picking up extra paper. They're almost all small (like a small inkjet) scanners without a flatbed, and they all operate in the 30+ ppm range and support scanning over a network. A few Fujitsu's, a few Canon's and one monstrous and very old HP SCSI scanner (comes with a flatbed as well) and none of them so far as I can tell have had any issues jamming or missing pages
Is the Fujitsu SnapScan any good at scanning a stack of glossy photographs? I've got thousands of old glossy prints I want to digitise, but the last sheet-feed scanner I tried couldn't cope with these, and flatbed is too slow.
I really don't understand the whole idea of going paperless. The vast majority of paper we get, we don't really need to keep more than a month or so. Bills, etc, when you get them, you review them for errors, if everything looks good you pay it, at most I keep 2 months worth of back bills around. If you close an account, keep the last statement for a year or two. Taxes, insurance papers, titles & deed, those you need to keep long term, but 7 years worth of returns, insurance contracts, deeds & titles will fit easily in one, maybe two, plastic file boxes that you can get from Staples for $20. A 2 draw filing cabinet and a couple plastic file boxes should handle the filing needs of the average family. Most people just keep too much paper. The reason you want to keep paper around is if there is ever a disagreement it is usable in court. I'm not sure scanned documents can be submitted to court, so I would never just scan then shred my tax returns.
"Have you seen my marbles"
I had this exact problem. With a scanner I was getting up to 3 scans per minute, and even at that rate it would have taken me months to scan all I wanted. I realized the problem was the physical moving of the element, and that if it were to take the whole snapshot at once then it would be a lot faster. A camera mounted overhead, with a trigger to snap photos dropped my scan time down so much I was doing 12-15 pages per minute. Assuming you get it well lit, with a decent camera that has little distortion, you can get images that are as good as a scanner MUCH faster. I posted about my setup here:
http://bobbaddeley.com/2011/05/fast-scanner/
I have Simple Scan on Ubuntu and a networked Brother MFC-7840W. The Brother has a multiple page feeder which doesn't jam much and Simple Scan which supports multiple pages. Couldn't be easier. Just put your document in the feeder, push scan and a few minutes later you have a 10 page PDF of it.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
I'm not sure what kind of document feeders the poster has been buying, but I regularly scan and fax hundreds of pages a week on a very affordable Brother multi-function machine. They cost about $300 and work just fine.
Of course, you could also take those old tax returns and stick them in a box in a closet somewhere on the 1/1,000,000 chance that you may ever need to look at them again.
I don't understand Slashdot's obsession with articles and questions about turning simple, mundane tasks into grossly overcomplicated, expensive technical "problems" in need of grossly overcomplicated, expensive technical "solutions".
I don't respond to AC's.
You don't need a scanner that costs "5 figures". You need something between a ScanSnap ($500) and an fi-6140 ($1,500). You can also look for used/refurb...
The cheap HP Multifunction I bought 18 months ago has worked for me. Yes, there are the occasional jams, but I have been able to scan all my old tax returns and continue to scan new documents. HP has made a loss on this machine, since I have not installed (let alone bought new) the ink cartridges.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Install a bidet.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
My reaction is, why would you want to go "paper-free"?
Seriously. Are you allergic to paper or something?
It would be one thing if everybody sent you bills and documents electronically and you never had to deal with paper again, but you're talking about scanning things in with a document feeder. WTF?
Seriously. It is much, much harder to keep records electronically than to throw the pieces of paper into a file cabinet and forget about it. This is well documented.
Maybe for a company that produces huge piles and mounds of documents every year it makes sense to want to convert them to electronic formats, but for an individual it makes no sense. And you're not talking about stuff like marriage licenses, now, you're talking about random individual tax records from years ago. WHY are you losing sleep over it?
The mere fact that it's hard for you to figure out how to do it should be a big clue that IT'S AN INCREDIBLE AMOUNT OF WORK THAT YOU WOULDN'T OTHERWISE HAVE TO DO. Are you so bored?
Breakfast served all day!
What happens in 4 years time when the IRS wants to do an audit on your 2011 return and makes the request "Show us the receipts"? Likewise for any legal document under the sun. Sure its great to have scanned copies, but I bet that there is still a requirement to back them up with the paper originals
("oh look, I just found he document giving me ownership of slashdot. Pity its worthless")
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Do it at work! Not only do they have better machines, you get paid to do it there!
I go paperless by realizing that "paperless" doesn't mean I expunge all of the paper in my home, only that I don't print anything, and try to get all of my correspondence electronically. In other words, "paperless" means "consume no paper", not "have no paper".
I still have old tax returns, etc. at home as well. I am still paperless, because all of new bills come electronically, I pay them through online banking, I no longer have print news or magazine delivery, and since I put a red dot in my mailbox the only "mail" I get are parcel deliveries and seasonal cards. I have tried to convince family to stop spending money sending xmas cards (especially since I'm not an xian and don't celebrate xmas), but good luck convincing your 90-year old grandmother that she shouldn't be sending you cards, when she's only just wrapped her head around your being a lesbian, and is still having trouble with the tree-hugging dirt-worshipper thing.
I'm always slightly tempted to find a solution for scanning paperwork, but it's just not worth it. Three years is about the most time you'll need any of that stuff -- it's not like photos and such that you want to digitize to keep forever and have easy access to. So throw everything in a box during the year. It's easy enough to find what you need through one year's paperwork. Then sometime after new years, box it up and throw it in a closet. After 3 years, shred it.
If you want to keep track of finances there are much better solutions than scanning receipts. For example, Mint.com.
I did this as my summer job last year. We were tasked with converting many (hundred) bankers boxes full of files into electronic format.
:)
We used the Canon DR-9050C, which I believe runs about $10k retail. This is considered a "production" scanner, and so is top of the line for its class. It was generally a great scanner, scanning about 100 ppm with good resolution. That being said, even this scanner had occasional problems with taking multiple sheets in at once (especially for files older than 4+ years, and light-weight paper). The hassle involved with organizing, de-stapling, taping receipts to paper, lining everything up for the scanner, etc. is really the biggest drawback with this sort of operation.
Depending on how many files you have to scan, it may honestly be worth your time to contract this out (look for 'document management' companies), if your time is worth money and you have a lot of files it is probably a better option. If you don't want to contract it out, look at renting a production grade scanner because anything less will see you go insane with frustration. Our scanner came with excellent software that scanned directly to various formats, we scanned to PDF. Many of these production scanners also allow you to use OCR, which obviously takes longer to scan but is pretty damn cool.
There were 2 of us scanning, it took us about 6 hours to scan 4-5 bankers boxes, this includes the organizing, destapling, taping, etc. So to give you a metric, this 10k machine allows 2 people working diligently to scan about 1 bankers box of files every 1.5 hours. If you are scanning a bunch of small files it can take significantly longer, a bankers box full of 80 personal tax files took far longer to process than a box full of 150-400 page corporate files.
Lastly I'll say good luck, this can be a pretty mind-numbing job, but the end product is well worth it
just don't print yourself, the trees for the stuff that you get in the mail are already dead anyhow, just don't print anything yourself, ideally don't even own a printer.
What's wrong with it taking months to scan? You've been fine this long. Do a couple a day, and scan new stuff from now on.
More and more companies here in Norway now offer eInvoice (eFaktura). Basically they arrive at my online bank as a PDF that I can download and archive/print or just leave there for reference, the archive goes back years. You can use it with or without automatic billing, so if you prefer to manually approve each invoice you can do that. It also gives you a simple link back from payment to invoice, brilliant. No fiddling with papers and a scanner, no large documents, no OCR issues, cheaper for them, easier for me, a win all around and much more secure than my email, as secure as my online bank. Why the rest of the world hasn't adopted it I don't know, I'd say it's a brilliant system.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Add in Yojimbo or Evernote and you'll be set.
The one thing I don't like about Evernote is that you cannot buy it; your only choice is to rent it at $x/month. There is no option (I asked) to simply pay them $y once, and simply get the current version of the software.
I have no need for all the online syncing stuff (which I can understand as a monthly fee), and have no desire to send personal documents into the cloud (especially since it's in the US and I'm in Canada).
Keep the paper; tax returns, brokerage confirmations etc. The paper in a box, in dry place, is a safe and long lasting storage medium. ... .
Any electronic version will be ephemeral . I am still providing proof of purchases for stock fraud schemes of the early 2000s.
Get large manila envelopes, at the beginning of the year take your old (two years ago) stuff and put in the envelopes , label them, Tax, brokerage, paid bill,
In ten years the box will be full. get another one.
NB: Tax can be audited 3 years from date of filing. AND there are ways to get beyond the limit.
That's where I'd start :D
Install a PDF exporter/printer as your default printer on your PC/Mac/etc. For Windows I would recommend the free PDFCreator from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ .
I do a lot of online shopping and like to keep a copy of my purchase receipts. I print my receipts to PDFCreator, name the output file something descriptive (YYYY-MM-DD - Merchant + Item description.pdf) and save the PDFs to a receipts folder. It fulfills my needs, doesn't waste paper, and I can print a receipt copy if I ever have the need.
I like having hard copy of important documents filed away for future reference. They don't take up nearly as much space as my paperbacks, CDs, and DVD collections do, so the 1-2 boxes of paperwork is just flat out not worth worrying about for me.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
1. http://www.sharpics.com/tabletop-monopod-p-28.html
2. Digital camera with a remote switch option (i.e. Poweshot G10)
3. Black Surface
4. Bright Lights
5. http://www.i2s-bookscanner.com/produits.asp?gamme=1011&sX_Menu_selectedID=path_1011_GEN (To 3d deskew text)
6. http://finereader.abbyy.com/ (to straighten up text a bit more in the 2d realm, and OCR the book)
Via this method it's about as fast as you can flip the pages. (Use the remote switch with your foot.)
Unfortunately you can't buy this convenient device any more:
http://hughsung.com/blog/index.php?itemid=61
When I had a bunch of old documents i wanted to image, I used a tripod to suspend my digital camera over my desk pointing downward, set it to fixed focus along with a bright light nearby, then my wife and I started snapping pics as fast as I could lay pages out. We used a DSLR, but any camera should work. Setting it to fixed focus was key to prevent focusing delays.
I'd put a page on the desk and she'd snap a pic as soon as I'd lay it down (with a remote shutter release, it would be easy to do it with one person). We did over 1000 pages in less than an hour - it took longer to shred the docs than it did to image them because the cheap shredder kept turning itself off due to thermal overload. I taped the focusing ring and zoom ring in place to make sure it didn't move out of focus and spot checked a few docs along the way to make sure everything looked good. My 10MP camera gave around 250dpi resolution for legal sized documents, which was more than sufficient for my needs. I originally thought I'd save them as uncompressed TIFF's and convert to PNG's, but it turned out that the "fine" JPG setting on the camera gave good results with small file sizes (and didn't need as many memory cards). I've printed a few of the docs since then, with adequate cropping in an image editor, the printed docs look about as good as a photocopy.
Maybe not the best solution for ongoing needs, but if you have a single big batch to do and you don't want to spend a lot of money on a scanner, it might be worth looking into. This method would work well with poor quality and/or oddly shaped originals like thermal paper receipts.
To quickly scan stuff I just use the PageScanner app for my iPhone. It takes a picture every ten seconds or so and when done combines them into a single PDF. Since its in your phone, it is super portable and convenient.
I'll take care of all that paper.
I've got a Canon GS-50, and over the past month have made the transition from huge amounts of papers to everything digitized.
My solution for multi feeds and jams? Notice, recover, and rescan. It honestly doesn't take that much longer. You will want to keep a quick eye on every page, anyways, in case of poor scans, off-perpendicular feeds, OCR-recognition failures (not so much the accuracy of the text, but the analysis confusing a block of text with graphics), and to trim blank or excess pages (page 8 of a 7-page duplex document, or page 2 of my financial statements which are the exact same notices 10 years running). Fire and forget would be lovely, but it doesn't happen.
It isn't like I only have a few things to scan, either. I have more than 15 kilos (33lbs) of documents to shred, plus the ~4 kilos (9lbs) I've already shredded and about another 10 kilos (22lbs) of scanned papers that don't need to be shredded before recycling (e.g. college club annuals). For the record, there are about 100 pages of standard 8.5x11 paper to the lbs (220 pages to the kilo -- equal to about 6500 sheets -- although many of the pages were significantly smaller like checks and the 'keep for your records' portion of bills).
It took less than a month at a couple hours a day to handle approximately 12,000 page-faces (lots of duplex pages, and the total sheet count is closer to 9,000 given how many were undersized pages).
---
Is it worth keeping old records? That depends. Some of these documents (e.g. my mother's living will, my house's deed) I need to keep a physical copy around regardless. Although this leaves me a copy on hand and I can put the original in a safe-deposit box. Some of these documents have limited lifespans (did I really need to scan the bank statements escrow account for my former tenant who moved out years ago? Probably not). Others are good to have forever -- I've looked up phone numbers from phone bills 15 years old, to get back in touch with someone. I need to keep many of my investments receipts so I can deal with taxes when they are sold.
For me, it is much easier to be a pack-rat of electronic files that fit onto a USB key, than to have stacks of papers around the house. If you don't have that much paperwork, don't need to store it indefinitely, or don't have the MustKeepEverything instinct, it probably isn't worth it to scan everything.
Easy. Use a camera. Even a camera phone has enough resolution fo a single page, a regular compact digital snap can be 6 pages laid out on the kitchen table and is easily legible.
Scanners are too much hassle.
Become brutal about tossing/shredding/recycling any bit of paper that's not ABSOLUTELY needed. Even my packrat girlfriend ends up with an entire year of tax and business related stuff in one 4" binder. Most of the paper that people hang on to (and e-docs as well) is entirely disposable.
Three Squirrels
Some receipts are printed with disappearing ink. Some can't be read after a month...yet alone 3 years. This is especially true of the copies on yellow receipt paper. I scan when my wallet gets too fat to fold. Scanning allowed me to take deductions that more than paid for the scanner.
Well, not completely.
But you don't seem to be able to buy a printer without an integrated scanner.
At home, I have a regular printer (with a scanner), a large format printer (with a scanner) and a photograph printer (with a scanner).
It would be nice to be able to get a cheap printer without a scanner attachment - I'd even be willing to pay the same amount if the quality (and longevity) of the printer was improved!
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Fujitsu ScanSnap. I got one six years ago for this purpose, and I'm using it to this day. It is a bit pricey upfront (the entry level model is $400) but it is totally worth it. Fast, excellent paper handling, good quality scans. I've emptied out four filing cabinets with mine, and I continue to use it yeas later.
There seems to be many models.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/185-9740896-4241560?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=Fujitsu+ScanSnap&x=10&y=19
Here in western Europe more and more can be done exclusively online.
I send bills as PDF (creating them in Google Docs nowadays) to my clients. I fill my VAT-fillings using the online website (ultra-piece-of-buggy-crap and it's an horror to get the TLS/SSL certificates right but it can be done). Same for the IRS fillings: all online (and it's also buggy as **** but, well, it can be made to work).
I ask for my utility bills to come online (some companies even beg you to move to the online version of their billing system).
I use emails instead of letters, etc.
Old paper sh!t goes into big boxes labelled by years, but since a few years it's nearly all only online stuff.
Once in a while I do print a good ol' letter. That's what HP LaserJet 4M+ and netcat'ing PostScript are made for ; )
When I was in a seemingly endless business travel, I discovered through desperation that my little 12 megapixel Canon pocket camera could take a decent whole-page document image. The JPEG files are also small enough to snap many pages and then go through the images to purge things later in batch mode, using a photo gallery program.
It's not as crisp as a good flatbed scan, but it is more readable than a fax, perfectly readable right from the camera, and easily cleaned up with usual digital photo post-processing tools (just to normalize the whites/blacks and perhaps crop to the page edges) if you want to make a clean print or PDF later for some reason. I used Gimp to crop/rotate/scale images to exact page sized images when I needed to print them. For one-off jobs I would also clean up the color curves in Gimp, but for large documents I ended up using a shell script and command-line Linux tools to adjust colors and convert many pages at once into a single PDF. In my experience, maybe 10% of the pages I imaged and stored would ever get this treatment because I had to submit them somewhere in electronic or paper form.
I placed the document on the floor, stood over it with flash and focus-assist lights enabled, zoomed into telephoto mode (to reduce barrel distortion from the lens) and then framed it up using the LCD on the back and took a shot. For multi-page documents, I spread them out and then walked down the line, efficiently snapping many pages in a row. You immediately realize the great throughput a camera has compared to any consumer scanner, and easily adapt to odd page sizes, stiff paper, etc. which would disrupt a page feeder.
The best technique was to lock my forearms against my hips, hold the camera as parallel to the floor as I could, and "pan" by swaying my hips while maintaining a good, flat focus plane. The first couple pages were difficult, but then I learned how the camera felt when correctly positioned, and started getting good shots on the first exposure. For small receipts and statements, I placed them on a blank white page so I could clean up the image later if needed, including cropping and scaling to the known page size and maintaining the physical dimensions for printing a 1:1 copy.
if you're scanning paper, then you aren't paperfree. you're still wasting paper (the things you printed or were printed and sent to you).
He's right. This is what I do - I can't be arsed to walk to the nearest scanner at work anymore, as a simple shot of my iPhone takes a good-enough picture of a side of paper.
As others have said, Fujitsu Snapscan. For around £350 you get a compact dual sided scanner that just works. We used them in a previous job and they had no trouble scanning thousands of pages a week with almost no jams.
Also, if any scanner starts to pick up multiple sheets or jam, look for a maintenance kit. Replacing the pads and rollers is a simple, routine task and does wonders. We kept spares in stock and had to service scanner feeds every couple of years or so.
Maybe you should download AutoIT and make a script to automate some of that.
If you work at a place that has a commercial-grade copier, they most likely have a scan function that will scan to PDF (or TIFF) to a folder or an email. You can get rid of a large backlog of paper and then once caught up, go for a consumer-grade duplex scanner like the ScanSnap (from what I can tell from the reviews it is the best of its class, but I don't own one.)
although some paper work can be eliminated after 4 years, other needs to be retained much, much longer. Supporting documents for tax returns -- especially those not reported by third parties to the irs -- should be kept for a minimum of 3 years AFTER you file the return. Six years if you have under-reported or taken aggressive deductions that may reduce your taxes due by more than 25%.
In addition you should retain every receipt for the purchase and capital improvements to your house until (see above) years after you sell the house -- this includes new roofs, AC, appliances, remodeling expenses, etc.
Stock records should be kept as above.
Contracts (esp. big ones) should be kept until the contract is completed, and at least until the statue of limitations runs out.
This doesn't even get into business property -- where you can be audited on a desk you purchased up to 14 years later (in theory). Property related to assets (vs. expenses) should almost be retained indefinitely.
This is the next generation of Scanner, it's amazing: http://www.getdoxie.com/
Many "wired" pro-level scanners at the office are set to keep a copy of everything they scan.
Are you sure you want to hand your tax and medical records over to your boss?
In my (admittedly limited) experience, when scanning "assorted" documents like you plan to do, Fujitsu's $500 ScanSnap personal scanners aren't any more prone to jams than their $20,000 production scanners. If anything, they're somewhat less prone to mangling documents, simply because they run more slowly.
With that said, if a few years of tax returns and legal documents will truly take months to scan, you have a massive volume of paper, and you should probably look into outsourcing. Using a Fujitsu ScanSnap, I scanned five years of receipts, tax documents, and correspondence for both myself and my consulting business in a couple days. At the time, I was the IT director for an authorized Fujitsu reseller, so I had half a dozen different higher-end scanner models available for personal use at essentially no cost, but there was no compelling reason to use any of them.
The key to avoiding jams and double-feeds is simply a bit of document prep and paying attention to what you're doing. For instance, when a stack of papers is tri-folded into an envelope and the sheet feeder path is perpendicular to the folds, you will have problems if you expect to be able to absent-mindedly drop the (somewhat folded) stack into the feeder and walk away.
More generally, the key to productive scanning is to come up with a routine that, while you are scanning, is as uniform as possible. You absolutely don't want to be in a position where you have to adjust settings for each document, so, for instance, you should scan everything in duplex, enabling the scanner's blank-page removal if desired, and you should have an "exception pile" where you place any documents that require special handling (e.g., enabling color), so you don't have to interrupt your workflow to toggle settings. Here I'm assuming that the vast majority of your documents will use one "main" setting, while a small fraction will require "custom" settings; if this is not true in your case, adjust the process to suit. You also don't want toÂbottleneck the process with synchronous processing, so if "in-line" OCR and/or image processing is materially slowing down scanning, you're probably better off disabling it and doing these tasks by other means (in batch when you're done scanning, via tools that watch a folder and process documents as they arrive, etc.).
Finally, unless you have some form of robust automatic document classification, I've found it's far more efficient to separate "scanning" from "organization" — first, I scan everything into an "unfiled" folder with sequential, generic filenames, then once I've finished scanning, I use a combination of the OS X Finder's "quick look" feature and ad-hoc, keystroke-activated scripts to label and sort the documents. If you can enlist an extra pair of hands, you could clearly improve throughput by running an "assembly line" where one person scans and the other organizes.
it doesn't make economic sense to go paperless. In some cases paper originals are still required. I would audit your material and find out how long you are legally required to keep items for, then trash anything that you don't need. I had about 10years and in some cases 20 years of paperwork, the most that I needed was 7 years, and a few items for proof of employment, the rest is now compost. I didn't spend ages scanning, I don't have to thank about archiving discs, it all fits in a couple of boxes on the top of a cupboard. Paper is more robust than discs, and formatting and OS issues are not there, vs disc or other software solutions.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I use an HP Photosmart C6180 "all in one" along with gscan2pdf for most stuff. It works surprisingly well. Duplex is a bit painful, though. I usually scan once a year, in January, everything for the year, after doing my taxes.
But sometimes I cheat and take some of it to work. It costs nothing to "scan to pdf/Email" on the leased Xerox Document Centre's, they make shockingly small but very readable outputs, and are SCARY FAST compared to anything else I have ever touched. I just spend 5 minutes of my own time on it, and can knock out many, many hundreds of pages.
One option might be to see if your local FedEx Office or other type copy store has any Document Centres in their rental lineup.
You could look at services like ShoeBoxed, where you mail them a stack of documents or receipts and they send you scans back. They're one I happened to hear about - I'm sure there are competitors. Just using them as an example, not an endorsement - I haven't personally tried them.
Advice: on VPS providers
Not sure about the model you have, but the Casio I have also has a "document" feature (not sure whether that's the word they use to label it, though, and it's not in front of me to check), which allows you to shoot a rectangular document and have it run a rectangularization algorithm on it, which can make the result look more "scan-like" rather than "just a photo." Not that it should matter for most purposes, in a sane world ...
It's not perfect, though; sometimes I enjoy taking normal pictures -- that is to say, snapshots that *aren't* rectangular documents, or anything close -- just to see what the rectangularization will choose to do; sometimes the camera just balks, and sometimes the results are just plain weird ;)
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
When they ask you for paperwork you sort of shrug and say "I was meant to keep a copy of that?"
This guy deserves to be heard, regardless of what the paullowers say.
Move to Estonia
Fireplace comes to mind....
Personal or production scanners need to be cleaned and maintained. Using non-soap cleaners for the lenses and glass helps to keep the crap out. Document joggers align paper - but they also kick dust/dirt out of the paper to be scanned. Most importantly is keeping ahead on your rollers. Clean them with a swab and good alcohol (not the 60-70% medical grade stuff). When the rollers are worn - take them out and replace as soon as possible. Oxidation is the biggest killer of rubber rollers over time. Sometimes highly acidic paper (from the lingin) will cause early failure too. By keeping rollers clean you will have less trouble. Oh, and if you can adjust the tension in the rollers - do that too.
When you start (and have a ton of stuff) going somewhere to use the big machines is probably your best bet. The Toshibas I work on scan at 80PPM. If they are well maintained and your paper isn't all tattered and folded they rarely double feed. Make sure you fan your paper out before putting it in the doc feeder.
Then you can use a smaller home machine for your upkeep.
Mine is an MFC-8860N, but my experience is the same. I frequently scan 20-30 page double sided documents and I can't recall the last time it jammed. The Mac software isn't especially great but it gets the job done.
The printer is actually the part that jams sometimes, but only when I'm printing a bunch of stuff on really thick paper.
He has a business to run, and has been running it successfully for quite a while, so presumably he knows what he's doing.
It's expensive, but not enterprise expensive. Probably the best mid-range scanner I've seen; fairly quick, damned reliable and produces damned good output.
Keep in mind any scanner that isn't five+ figures is going to have multi-page-grab issues, especially if you just take a bunch of papers, fail to separate them (ensuring they aren't 'stuck' to each other) and simply toss the whole stack in. It's the nature of the beast - going paperless is easy since you won't be tossing massive swaths of musty old crap in; it's dealing with the prior backlog that's time consuming.
Been using the little stick scanner for everything, the software is great! I recommend!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
I bought an old HP Document Sender (model 9100 i believe), it's the kind that business would have paid huge money for a few years ago, but now they're cheap on ebay, have a sheet feeder that hasn't jammed on me yet and can scan to email...
It is massively more reliable than any of the home model sheet feed scanners i've ever tried.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Another +1 for Brother MFC's. I have two - a 7840W at home and a 7440N (basically the same, but no wifi) at work, and they rock. They're both set up to scan direct to FTP - no messing with drivers. I also have my work one set up to integrate with an email-to-fax service, so the fax functionality works without a phone line - yes, it's not hard to scan a file and then email it, but having it integrated means that anyone can send a fax without me teaching them how to use it. I've never had either machine jam.
I use a mix of paper and electronic records. Things that arrive electronically get filed by yyyy/mm/what-it-is AND for financial stuff, an entry is placed into Quicken. The year is critical. It needs to be extremely accurate. The month is helpful, not too important as long as it is close.
For paper things, I have a single 1" folder per year that I place papers into ----in-order----, then add an entry into Quicken. The same yyyy and month statements apply. Year is critical, month just needs to be close.
Quicken is my system of record. Finding a receipt from 2010 is easy. If a recursive PDF grep in the 2010 folder for the company name ... doesn't find anything, I open Quicken and find the payment. That gives me an approximate date. I pull out the 2010 papers folder and can quickly get to the correct month. In the next 10 seconds, I have the receipt. Worst case, I have to look around in the month prior and after the date to find the receipt ... another 20 seconds.
Simple. Effective. Organized, but not too much effort at all.
Filing needs to be easy and effective, but not waste more time that necessary. Bring anal about organization doesn't help find the docs faster.
1. Hardware. Canon ImageClass D1120 multifiunction ($299 or less at Fry's after rebates). Yeah, it jams sometimes, but not very often.
2. Software. Nothing beats eFax Messenger, free with monthly subscription to eFax service. It's great for scanning and for marking up scanned documents. Maybe it's even free with a free eFax account.
I don't understand Slashdot's obsession with articles and questions about turning simple, mundane tasks into grossly overcomplicated, expensive technical "problems" in need of grossly overcomplicated, expensive technical "solutions".
Just wait till you see the "solution" for getting laid.
It is not just scanning - I need to convert a document to an indexable text document. I get hundreds of ads for products which may be useful some day. Storing them is no good - I'll never find that gizmo I vaguely remember seeing 18 months ago. I'll have to google it, but a scan would be a nice preselection. And I don't want to spend a lot of time sorting my files; I want to be able to find what my water bills were in the last 3 years. Or phone bills.
If it's more work to save a doc in a paperless format, or if it costs more, then it isn't practical and doesn't make a lot of sense. Also, if you are all digital and a little lazy about backups, you're only a disk crash away from disaster. I like having paper copies of important stuff.
I do print most everything double-sided. This alone will save a huge amount of paper. Duplex printers aren't nearly as expensive as they used to be. I have a samsung clp-620nd, a networked color duplex laser printer. It's fantastic for the money (about $300), but I'm sure there are others out there that would work just as well.
If I do need to scan, I have a cheap HP j4550 multifunction inkjet. I never bothered buying new ink for it, but I do use the scanner. Normally I'll import into SimpleScan and output to PDF. SimpleScan works surprisingly well. I also print to PDF for receipts and the like if I want to keep a digital copy. If it's important I'll also print a copy and put it in the file cabinet.
My thought on scanning vs printing is, if it's important then do both. Don't keep anything that matters in just in one place.
It is expensive, but brutally efficient and fast. I'm yet to see it mishandle a page. As added bonus it includes full version of Acrobat, so it outputs .pdf and works with Linux too.
Disadvantages: It is not flatbed, so you can only scan free sheets
A gallon of gasoline, a match, take off you clothes and make a pile of them with your papers and set you free my friend!
Achille Talon
Hop!
I have a ScanSnap, but it requires Windows. Google Desktop for Linux was helpul to index the searcheable PDFs. And now Google has dropped it. Has anybody have a good solution with ScanSnap for Linux?
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
I've setup several home-businesses with Fujitsu Scan Snap to Evernote setups, they already work together, and the searchable PDF's are INVALUABLE.
I can think of one example were keeping the paperwork helped. Years back I had paid off a credit card and had the statement saying I did. Years later here comes "buy off debt" company saying that I owed money to former credit card company. A swift showing of the paperwork and, begone debt collector.
Trying really hard to figure out what paper I use at home and drawing a blank. Been filing taxes electronically for 12 years now, have all my bills sent to email and automatically paid. What few important documents I have usually have to remain "documents" and not digital files, like a house deed and legal papers. I have a small filing cabinet pretty much only filed with receipts and instruction manuals, and I could probably throw away 90% of it anyways. About the only paper I get in the mail these days is junk mail and that ends up in the recycling bin the moment I receive it. I don't subscribe to newspapers telling me "yesterdays" internet news. I mean, I am pretty much paperless already and I haven't even tried. I have a paper shredder that was last used 2 years ago and is still only half full and an all-in-one printer that has been collecting dust for years.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
If you have those documents on paper, probably a scanned copy will hold no legal value. You should check if your local legislation allows you to present digital copies instead of the originals if needed. If you work at home or have a small business, you should check the accounting procedures for electronic documents, as many countries have different ideas of what an "electronic document" is (and most of them won't allow you to just digitalize the documents and throw the originals away).
Storing paper isn't that much of an hassle, when compared to long-term digital storage, specially if you don't plan to need it soon. Buy a box of binders and separate the documents by year/month, or create an index.
I'd go with the 5 figures scanner.
Or you know... maybe a 1 figures box to hold some papers.
Another option is a matchbook. Also 1 figures. You will be paper-free.
Buy a bidet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet
A ScanSnap costs $400, obviously quite an intricate product (iphones are less than this)
Gotta nip this bullshit in the bud. iPhones are susidized such that even the "free" 3GS is costs a cancellation fee (~$400) and activation fee ($50ish). So the ScanSnap is *not* more expensive than an iPhone, even a 2 year old design.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Enterprise-grade scanners are NOT expensive. I use an HP 7110 series MFD which OK, it snaffles an extra page now and again (it is rare this happens), but it is fast and has been reliable over the six years I've had it. While it is not 30ppm fast scanning at 600dpi, it is 3ppm fast which is SOHO fast (define "Enterprise grade" for us! I define it as "Not what you'd normally find in a home study"). I have used it to scan oh, probably half a million sides of A4 in the time I've had it.
Cost? Change out of £600 new IIRC. You can still get them secondhand for around £100.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
You not figured out the three seashells?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Make sure that none of your service providers and organizations that you interact with send you paper based communication in the first place. Then use the round file for everything else. Why are you keeping these records anyway?
You can make or buy a simple rig to position a digital camera above a desk surface (I use a 1960s era tripod with the post mounted upside down, but it is a little awkward). Unless you need to capture color, you don't have to be very careful about lighting: you can use your camera in its black and white setting (that cuts the size of the files down a lot, too.)
Most of the time you only need to consult the old paperwork and viewing the pages in a slideshow fashion is at least as fast as going through a bunch of PDFs to find what you need. On the rare occasion when you need to copy/paste a big chunk of text, you can run the photo image through any scanning software and get at least as good output as you would from scanning paper. Usually better, since it is easy to clean up a poor original in the Gimp, Photo$hop, or whatever. Even with that extra step, saving the pages as photographic images is a lot faster over all than scanning them with anything less than a commercial grade ($$$) scanner.
You will need to come up with a good naming and folder convention if you want to be able to find anything quickly, but you would have to do that with the scanner output too. The difference is that with the photos, you would probably want to use more folders: one for each multipage document, probably.
On a daily basis, it is easy enough to take photos of tax documents and the like as they come in, with camera in hand. I have a flatbed scanner on my desk, but it is faster for me to snap a photo, and if I had gotten the angle too wrong, take a better one, than to fuss with scanner and its software.
Will
I decided to go paperless, too. This means selecting electronic delivery of all the documents you can. For others who insist on sending you paper mail, get Virtual Post Mail (http://www.virtualpostmail.com/). They will scan all your mail to downloadable .pdf files. They will forward original documents if you wish or recycle them. They even have a check depositing service. It's about $100 per year.
I have been using them for a few months now and it is working great. No more incoming paper. As others have said, don't bother with all your past documents, put them in a banker's box and destroy them over time. It will be too time consuming and expensive to scan all your past documents.
http://www.xfriend.de/de/download/downloadarchiv/
I photograph any important stuff as I get it through the door. I tried scanning but it's tedious, and a reasonable digi cam with enough light is quite adequate. I may get a wifi SD card, then this makes transfer to the machine quicker. If I need to treat any images or resize, I do it in Photoshop with a saved action.
Virtually jam free and fast, Fujitsu fj-6130 is in the sub $1k range depending on where you buy. The are expensive because they are worth it.
Interesting to come across this article. I had the idea for a business that trucks around one of these multi-sheet scanners (probably higher-end than the fujitsu previously mentioned but same brand), and scans your documents, with shredding service if needed. After this post, I'm realizing that a small office with voting-booth style setups where you can rent time on a scanner and computer that goes directly to memory stick would be good. It could use some version of steadystate where the information on the computer is wiped and rebooted at the end of each session. Shredders would also be available.
I work in a prosecutor's office that has gone "paper less" (because, unfortunately, law enforcement and the courts haven't gotten rid of their paper requirements) and we use Kodak Scanmate scanners to scan in thousands of sheets of paper everyday. They're excellent, moderately priced ($400ish), and I've never seen any of our ladies really have any problems with 'em.
All those papers will become obsolete one day. Just scan your new stuff and throw the obsolete stuff away. In 5 years time you will be paperless.
-- Cheers!
Why scan? I don't bother. I get a few receipts that I keep, that's it. Taxes is mentioned a lot, but the tax people already get everything they need without involving me. They get the details of every bank account - including the payment of wages - so there is nothing left to report. They have all they need to know, and basically only send a letter with what they have. They ask "is there anything else", but for most people, there isn't. Not if you have a regular job and keep you money in some bank.
The paperless society is a myth. My degree is in CS, I worked in Industry, a large multinational corporation, and I've had my own computers since 1980. We digitized everything, *BUT* we physically archived all important papers. Some papers you need to keep for a year, some for 3, some for 10 and some for life. The multinational corporation was life of the company plus 10 for some. Digitization is great (when used with a proper naming convention) as it allows you to find things. OTOH I've never known any one who hasn't lost a record or two. Some times it's hundreds or more and you may need those. It's not just scanning, but records retention, naming conventions, and back up. No one knows how long CDs and DVDs will last in storage. All we have are accelerated aging and projected results, but they are beginning to develop a pretty good track record. Just don't go cheap. One thing though is they are fragile. Sometimes you look at a DVD and wonder how it's still working and other times just a couple of light scratches render one useless. The Cloud, data integrity and security? I wouldn't use the cloud on a bet for business and personal data storage and it's been my profession. It just gives the hackers a better target. Also nothing is truly secure if it's connected to the Internet. If the wrong folks want to see it, they will! If the Feds want to peruse through the data base looking for "things", they will! You'd likely never know they'd been there. Remember that likely some one has a back door key to virtually anything on the net or in the cloud. Add to that storage going out of business. Huge amounts of data have been lost that way. Data integrity. I've done a lot of photography. I've found that every time I review files I find at least 3 or 4 (some times more) images that have become corrupt. Hard drives are probably the poorest form of storage for data integrity when it comes to images. However with the mass of data I keep I have noticed a marked improvement in HDs, particularly over the last 10 years. Of course it could be the OS and not the HDs. I've never lost a text record, but I can plan on having to restore a few images and particularly those saved as JPGs every time. OTOH that not too bad for many Terabytes of images saved as JPGs. All businesses that I know of, not only digitize, but they physically archive the original documents. In many cases the only legal document is that original. Generally, Wills, Deeds, and *signed* Contracts must be kept in physical form. Please note I said generally. Laws, regulations, and convention vary from location to location. If you really want to digitize everything *AND* throw out the paper, talk to a lawyer (from your area) who specializes in business law. He/she will tell you what you have to keep and how long and the risks if you lose the data. It may turn out not to be much...then again like the medical industry going paperless? There is a paper backup of every record. To top it off...most of them ... All I've seen, are still using XP Pro as do the corporations I worked for and retired from nearly 20 years ago.
I've been considering going paperless at home for a while. I have a flatbed scanner which may not be the fastest solution, but my paper archive isn't too large and I don't mind spending the time. But what (Linux-friendly) software do people recommend for organising the PDF output? I'm imagining something like an email client - documents arranged by date, with a subject and sender field, etc. Searchable and sortable! Since my volume is low, manual input of this metadata would be acceptable. Any ideas?
Receipts, business papers, envelopes, paper currency, coupons used & unused, every surface of every DVD/CD/album cover, handwritten notes to self, napkins, gum wrappers, each side of the thumb drive I'm saving the scans to, even pens and pencils.
Then I'm throwing *everything* away.
http://www.documentsnap.com/
Brooks Duncan will help you go paperless, tame your documents and provide useful hints. Well worth visiting.
Of course, Fujitsu ScanSnap is the most recommended scanner. I have one myself, and it's a joy to use. Just put the paper in the tray, press the blue button. A short while later the searchable (i.e.: OCRed) document is sitting in my electronic Inbox, and the paper can go to the shredder.
I use Leap to name and tag the documents, then Hazel conveniently files them away for me.
Leap: http://www.ironicsoftware.com/leap/
Hazel: http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php
Of course, I'm a Mac user. There will no doubt be similar products for Linux (using xattrs to tag files, perhaps?)
Actually a lot of these guys live with their parents and they take care of their papers. So these guys are really paper-free! XD
Seriously, even if you scan all papers in your house is a bad, bad, bad idea rely them in a hard disk or another digital solution. A hard disk crash and you will made lots of paperwork, even in "Digital" countries like Japan or USA. Specially for legal documents that need signature, or in a hurry you need paper copy and you can't download them -> You crash your car in an accident and you need a paper for your car insurance, you won't popup a tablet and download them specially if you are wounded or all your belongings are destroyed.
Even in sci-fi movies like the Fifth Element they print small plastic cards with data, they never say "I'll download that to your phone-tablet-mind", so we can really be paperless after all? XD
Once you got PDFs or JPGs you need to somehow organize them in a meaningful way: - by document date (a lot of extra work to add that)? - by type (could be done while scanning)? - by expiry date? - by sender/recipient ? OCR the content and make it conveniently available What system would do that?
Hohoho!
Paperless *sighs*. This is one of the classic jokes, it never gets old :D Right up there with the self-debugging compiler. Comedy gold.
Unless you pay for Evernote (which I do), all your transfers between your device(s) and Evernote are unencrypted. So, unless you pay $6 per month, or whatever it is, you're sending all of your financial data unencrypted over the internet.
Furthermore, even if you ARE paying for Evernote, all your data is stored in plaintext on their servers. If their server is ever compromised, or they have a rogue employee, you could be in serious trouble. If you choose to encrypt your data before putting it into Evernote, that reduces it to the point of uselessness.
A year or two ago, I bought a Fujitsu ScanSap S1500M scanner. While it's possible to mess this scanner up with extremely long or ripped up receipts, it takes almost anything I throw at it. It feeds pages of different sizes, auto duplexes when necessary, does colour or black & white automatically, does OCR, and comes with a version of Adobe Acrobat. This product really has exceeded my expectations.
DEVONThink Pro is good, but I suppose one mark against it is that I haven't used it to its full capacity yet. By this I mean that if it was better, perhaps I'd be using more than just a general store. On the other hand, I can always find a receipt in there if I need it.
The biggest problem is that despite all this, I haven't really been able to go paperless. According to my accountant, Revenue Canada still wants hard copies, so if I'm ever audited (which seems to be almost every year for some reason or another), paper copies must be produced. Plus, if I hand in 30% of my receipts in electronic format, and the other 70% in paper format, someone has to go through each of those and ensure that all the data is there, and weed out the duplicates. This means that despite me scanning all my receipts, I still have to hand in the paper versions, and I still have to go through my electronic receipts and sort out which ones are duplicates of paper ones, and which ones are strictly electronic. Then I imagine that the person going through all this at the accountant's office is probably just printing it all out anyway to save time. Going through a stack of paper receipts is still just easier for most people than a directory of PDFs. Therefore, if they aren't printing it out, I'm paying for the extra hours to cover their reduced efficiency.
The end version is, you can go to a lot of effort and implement all the technology you want to go paperless, but it's very hard and may not even be possible. I think it's still worth trying, though.
www.clarke.ca
I've been using Paperport for 15+ years to scan and store documents. The newer versions use pdf format while the older ones were proprietary. My current scanner is an HP 5590. Other then being temperamental on occasion it has worked well. ADF can do both single and automatic double sided scanning and the flatbed can be used for all the weird sized items. My main concern is HP seems to be dropping their quality on newer products. Paperport also has a printer driver so you can print to paperport and have the printout stored as a pdf. One of the nice things is I scanned a signature so now I can sign documents and email them off to wherever they need to go.
The best part of electronic storage is it takes a lot less space then paper and is more searchable ;)
1st is...you got to ask yourself..."Can you live without all those papers?", "Do you honestly need them on hadcopy?"..after that you'll deal with insecurity, thinking its not safe to trust someone's server your scanned data, then you should ask yourself "Do you honestly think someone would be interested with your personal Data?" if someone will, don't you think that FBI has a copy of it? And, then if someone else would have an interest with your own private data, wouldn't they think to break in to your house and just steal those papers? Then, move on, scan them.