The paperless office is something that has been prosletised and attempted for many years by forward-thinking companies, with varying degrees of success. For the most part it is, unfortunately, impossible. Third-party suppliers sending physical invoices and HMRC insisting on sending letters means that even businesses who themselves generate no paperwork have it cruelly thrust upon them.
For freelancers, however, it is a more achievable dream. The small nature of our businesses means less potential paperwork coming in and out, and these days it’s easy to digitise the small amount that is unavoidable, letting you enjoy a clutter-free utopia, where you and your laptop rule the home office alone. I’ve been essentially paperless for around a year now, and here’s how I did it.
1. Set fire to your printer
If you’re trying to get rid of paperwork, having the means of production right next to you is a terrible idea. It’s like trying to diet with a chocolate fountain in your kitchen. Get rid of your printer by any means necessary. Donate it to charity, throw it out a window, give it a Viking funeral – whatever.
2. Invest in a shredder
Replace your wasteful, paper-billowing printer with a nice shredder to get rid of any errant paperwork that comes your way. Not only is this more secure than discarding paperwork whole, it’s incredibly cathartic. Don’t forget to recycle your shredded paper!
3. Get rid of your in-tray
This one is fairly obvious. If you don’t have anywhere to store paperwork needlessly, it’ll encourage you to do away with it!
4. Switch all your bills to paperless
This can usually be done via your provider’s website, and if it can’t, make a fuss or switch to a different company. This means that instead of your doorway being darkened by wasteful envelopes you’ll get a simple email every month. File them away in a folder or with a label and they’ll be safe forever.
5. Scan your receipts
Records of any business expenses you incur need to be kept for six years in case HMRC come calling. This is obviously a silly requirement as regular shop receipts become illegible after a few months. Save yourself space and worry by scanning your receipts and storing them in your cloud storage solution of choice. For a more bespoke receipt scanning product check out our friends Receipt Bank.
6. Get some good OCR software
Every so often some terrible client will give you a printed sheet of some kind. It could be a list of requirements, a first draft of some website copy – anything really. To fulfil your paperless destiny you need to get this scanned and shredded, stat.
If you can’t get your hands on a proper scanner, or simply don’t have space for one, I’ve found the Google Drive mobile app to be a particularly good (and free) way to scan paper documents into electronic format. It will save the original image and convert the text into digital format as best it can. OCR technology still isn’t that great, so you’ll have to proof and correct anything you scan, but once it’s digitised your life is that much simpler.
7. Destroy your remaining paperwork with extreme prejudice
Once all your documents are digital you might be tempted to file copies away for safe-keeping. Remember this though – if there is still paper in your office, you’re not operating a paperless office, are you? It’s not good enough to hide your paperwork, it must be shredded as soon as you’re satisfied your digital copies are safe.
Follow these simple steps and you’ll soon be well on your way to de-cluttering your home office and doing your bit to help the environment too.
Any more tips to banish paperwork permanently? Let us know in the comments.
Photo by William Hook
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