Quit the Paper, Save the Trees: Five Tips for Going Paperless

Dennis Snider

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We are privileged as a generation to be living in the digital age. Almost all the business we conduct today takes place in the digital domain. This has helped us cut costs on paper services and provided more permanent storage of information.

If you go paperless as a business, you help save the environment and also free up a big chunk of your capital that can go to other parts of your business. If you need some tips on how to make the transition, here are five of them for you.

1. Electronic Payroll and Accounting is the way

Move all your payroll and accounting online to reduce the number of paper checks and invoices you send. There is a great tool to help you do this called Freshbooks. It was designed with Small Businesses as a cloud-based accounting system to take care of invoicing, expense tracking, and any other thing you would otherwise need paper to do. Freshbooks allows you to do all your accounting from anywhere with their mobile app. With an easy-to-use interface and round the clock customer support, you are in good hands.

2.Minimize Your amount of Faxed Documents

Some businesses still prefer to use the Fax system despite all the new technology available today. Consider using services that convert faxes to email to avoid dealing with fax documents. MyFax and MetroFax are two of these services you might want to explore. If ever you have to send a fax to your clients, you can use a PDF through any of these services and they will convert it to fax form for your client.

3. Pick the Most Secure Cloud Platform.

Going paperless means all your documents and data will have to be stored on a cloud-based platform. With the recent cases of hacking and security breaches among some cloud-based platforms, you need to make sure you pick the one with the best security. Even major cloud giants like Dropbox had had their security compromised in recent times. SugarSync and JustCloud are two platforms that have proven to have a high-security rating.

4.No More Paper Receipts.

Are you still taking paper receipts when you go out to buy office supplies? You don’t need to. You can ask them to email you receipt to you so you won’t have to deal with that little piece of paper. Organize your email account so that you can find all your receipts in one place, making it easy for you when you have to pull them out for any purpose.

5.Reduce Junk Mail

The less Junk Mail you have in your life, the better it will be for you. One way to get rid of junk mail is to sign up for DirectMail’s ‘Nationa Do Not Mail List’. You fill a form with your business address and kiss all that junk mail goodbye. This will save you a lot of time that you would otherwise have spent sorting through junk mail.

Conclusion

Going paperless can be scary for some businesses, and that is perfectly understandable. The vulnerability in having all your information in soft-copy is one that cannot be ignored. A good way around this is to invest in an external drive and a second cloud system for backup purposes.

Ensure that you have your information backed up on multiple devices, so you know you are safe if you experience a system or server crash.