Batch scanning services

Worthwhile?

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We currently utilise one of our admin staff to scan the previous year's personal tax files onto our system. This is carried out during the year in between their other duties.

I'm now wondering if we would be better off engaging an outside company to batch scan the whole lot in one go. We have approx 1,000 personal tax files, with say 15 pages per file.

Do any of you use a similar service? Do you have a rough idea of cost? any particular company recommendations/ones to avoid (we're based in North London/Herts)?

 

Many thanks

Replies (5)

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
09th Jul 2018 10:54

If I was in that situation I'd certainly use an outside facility but I'm interested to know why you are still using/accepting paper?

If you produced all documents electronically and insisted, as much as possible, that clients only sent you scans of docs you needed then the problem of mass scanning would vanish overnight?

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Replying to Paul Scholes:
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By DonDan
09th Jul 2018 11:20

Hi Paul, thanks for the reply. I'd say it's a combination of inertia on our part and a decent percentage of our clients being not that computer savvy.

It's definitely an area to look at over the next few years as i'm sure the savings on printing/postage/scanning etc costs would be fairly significant

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Replying to DonDan:
Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
09th Jul 2018 13:37

Hi DonDan

We started April 2008 by telling clients that the default for all communications and documents would be electronic and I was pleasantly surprised at how many clients jumped at it who we thought had no idea about email, several were Ok with us using their kids' email addresses!

The 15% who still required paper were gradually brought into the 21st century over the next few years.

Internally I removed all individual printers, leaving a main networked one and put tape over the "copy" button, ie no photocopies.

This went hand in hand with gradually moving everything online, including cloud accounting, and keeping all working papers as spreadsheets.

It wasn't just the saving in material costs of paper/ink/postage, but savings in time in not having to handle paper and, within two years, moving to a smaller office not needing 15 filing cabinets and other cabinets or a space for a server and associated boxes.

We made the decision to move all old files to an outside facility and let them die the death over 7 years. These days, some of these facilities will digitalise paper for you but only if you require any retrieved.

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By Maslins
09th Jul 2018 13:18

We did this maybe 7 years ago, and it was similar to what you've done, basically the office junior doing a couple of hours here and there in between doing other (more interesting!) tasks.

However, we didn't have _that_ much stuff to scan. We made the move reasonably early in the biz life (biz approaching 10 years old in total, from scratch, so not many clients in early days!). Sounds like maybe you've got a lot more.

From the amount they've done so far and the time taken, can you estimate how long it'll take them to finish? I'd perhaps do a back of fag packet calculation of that first. If they'll manage to finish it within a couple of months (around other work), I'd probably plod on. If it'd be more like a year plus, probably worth subcontracting out.

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By DonDan
10th Jul 2018 09:51

Thanks to both of you for some very useful info

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