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The hard life of my shredder...

18th May 2010
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With a planned move of office set for 1 August, I decided, early last week, to seriously consider the possibilities of a 'paperless office'.

For some time going paperless is a thought that I have had but, I just haven't made the effort to sort things out.  I am quite a traditionalist and like to read things on paper in front of me (I know not great for the environment) but I do find it quite a lot harder to read a set of accounts on a computer screen.  I also have a bit of a worry about losing data and I know where things are with paper.

My brother who is in IT often says to me 'the PC's are much safer and with online backups you can reduce the risk of lost data!  What would happen to all your papers in a fire?'

This really got me thinking.  I decided I had main parts of the hardware.  A networked hard-drive with 320gb of space (plenty for my 100 clients at present) along with a networked all in one printer/scanner/copier with the ability to scan straight to any folder in .pdf format.  I already kept copies of all my outgoing letters in separate folders for each client on the drive so not a great deal of time would need to be spent setting up any structure.

I decided to contact Digita (my accounts and tax software provider) about 'File Cabinet'.  I had a demonstration yesterday.  The product is great, really simple to use and all ready having the Digita suite it will save time on things that need saving direct from Digita.  Digita are currently looking at the pricing for a single user license version (hopefully to be revealed next week) at which point I can decide on my way forward.  One useful point to come out of the demonstration was the subject of a second monitor.  Ashley from Digita said 'Working with only one screen for me is like working without a mouse!'  He pointed out how this could be beneficial by being able to have two programs open say my working papers on one screen and Digita Accounts production on the other for data entry.

The demonstration made up my mind.  Today I went out and bought a second monitor (a 20 inch acer) and it really is so much better!

I like it so much that by midday I had decided to start scanning and shredding.  I knew whatever the outcome from Digita with regards to the price I still had a system in place that would work, although a little slower.

So in the last few hours my scanner has been going non stop.  My poor shredder doesn't know what's happened and has even needed a rest at times!

On a serious note though to those who think that going paperless is expensive it doesn't need to be and for the money that can be saved on paper, ink, files, filing cabinets, etc any outlay can soon be recovered.

I am really so glad that I have finally taken this decision and I really will not be going back.

To a paperless future!

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