How to go paperless: 5 tips to manage scanned documents

It’s fair to say that we’ve all been there where we need to find that receipt, invoice, or statement, and it is nowhere to be found when needed. Preparing for tax season can also create stress when searching for all the receipts you need for your expense reports. Digitilizing your paper documents will save you time and take at least one problematic thought off your mind.  

Here are our five digital document management tips that you can adopt starting today and which will save you time in the future:

1. Make it a habit to go paperless.
2. OCR your documents.
3. Set up your digital library.
4. Organize files with extra thought. 
5. Automate document workflows like never before.

Make digitization fun, and make it a habit to go paperless

Set up a challenge to digitize documents of all kinds. Invite your friends and colleagues to join the game. Suggest the ultimate goal - to digitize as many documents as possible. 

The benefits might not be seen immediately, but once you are at the airport and need to show a copy of your travel itinerary, tickets to the museum, a college acceptance letter, or other relevant information proving your purpose of visiting the country, your digital archive will come in handy. Especially when it comes to tax season - having all receipts in an organized manner will seem like a gift sent by your caring self from the past.

With Scanner Pro, you can take as little as several taps to create a high-quality scan of your document:

1. Open Scanner Pro and tap the orange + button. Alternatively, touch and hold Scanner Pro’s app icon to open quick actions > New Scan.
2. Position your document and wait for the app to automatically detect the document's borders and take a photo of it. You don’t need to tap the Shutter button in the Auto-capture mode in Scanner Pro.
3. Tap the checkmark in the right corner > tap the scanned page, and tap Save.

Turn your scans into text with OCR 

While it is good to have a document digitized and ready to use, you might notice that the scan is in JPG or PDF formats, and the text can’t be easily extracted. That is when Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can come in handy. It makes your document searchable and text in the file easy to copy and edit. It can be considered ‘digital 2.0’ as it provides flexibility when interacting with your documents. 

With Scanner Pro, you can apply OCR when you create a scan with the app. For this, open the scanned document, tap the Text button in the bottom right corner, and copy the text or Share the document. 

Set up your digital library 

As with all physical paper documents, your digital files need a dedicated place to be securely stored. Luckily, various free and paid cloud storage solutions are available. Depending on your requirements and the size of your digital library, you can choose from iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, and many more.

It is also essential to securely store a copy of your scanned files in advance. What if your internet connection is lost on the road, or you worry about keeping all your essential files in one place? Consider keeping a local copy of the files on your phone, computer, or external hard drive. This way, you can relax and be assured that your documents are securely backed up. 

Luckily, Scanner Pro offers both on-device document storage regardless of internet connection and automatic backup storage in the cloud of your choice, requiring an internet connection. So you can add your accounts in Scanner Pro Settings > Cloud Services and automatically get all your newly digitized paper documents uploaded to the storage of your choice. 

Organize with extra thought 

Once you have chosen the preferred storage for your digital documents, consider creating several folders such as Documents, Invoices, and Scanned Photos. So, as you continue with document digitization, there is a dedicated folder for each file type. 

Naming conventions are also great for digital document management. You can set up the preferred name format and reuse it for freshly digitized files. 

It is best to incorporate the standard format that includes the date and year. That way, you can easily sort your documents and find the necessary ones. 

In apps like Scanner Pro, you can set the default name for your new files to save time when saving scans. To find this option, open Scanner Pro > Settings > Scanning > Default Name. You can select from Templates or set your own by typing the preferred text and automatic placeholders (Date, Day, Time, Seconds). For example, Year - Month - Day Medical records.

Automate like never before

Going paperless and digitizing documents can sound like great goals. Still, when it comes to reality and spending time managing files, it can quickly become a daunting task. 

We want to share a quick and easy document management process. You will need to spend some time at the beginning to set it up, but once you have it, digitizing your documents will take seconds. 

With Scanner Pro, you can set up Workflows designed to make scanning and managing files effortless. Workflow is a sequence of actions to automate the management of your documents. Later, you can start the workflow from share dialogue.

To add new automation for your documents:

1. Open Scanner Pro.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Workflows > Add Workflow.
4. Select the preferred actions for your workflow.

Here is the full list of available actions: Send by Email, Send by iMessage, Save to Photos, Rename Document, Save to Folder, Upload to Google Drive or other cloud storage, Delete Document.

For example, you can create a workflow for your accountant. So once you scan a new receipt, select the specific workflow, and Scanner Pro will rename your document, upload it to the cloud storage, and send it via email. 

If you want to go further with automation (and that’s fantastic), open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone or iPad and set up your own shortcuts, also known as sequences of actions with supported apps. Scanner Pro allows you to add actions such as Open last scan in Scanner Pro, Scan with Scanner Pro, Search in Scanner Pro, and Create new scan in Scanner Pro. 

Conclusions

Don’t be overwhelmed by the number of paper documents and paper trail. You can adopt eco-friendly document routines and quickly digitize your documents. 

Now you know how to go paperless. You can begin your going-paperless pursuit today with Scanner Pro.

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