How you can stop using paper in your practice

A paperless office is more efficient, more ecological, and much more modern. In this guide we explain how to achieve a paperless practice step by step.

Less paper means more efficiency

Eliminating all paper from your office is unrealistic. There will always be some paper from or for a client, supplier or partner who needs it.

But reducing paper to a minimum is possible and will noticeably improve your practice’s efficiency. Digital documents are much easier to store, manage, search and process. This allows your team to gain time to work instead of spending it organizing or searching for papers.

You can start by scanning the papers you currently have. Converting these papers into digital documents for the future. This isn’t something you can do in a day, converting your system to a system with less paper must be well planned and have the involvement of the entire team.

6 reasons to abandon paper forever

Advisory practices can generate a large amount of paper, as you well know. Something that can generate some problems:

Appearance

An office full of papers and files doesn’t look like a professional workspace. Visitors, including clients, won’t be impressed if all the desks and cabinets are overflowing with papers, documents, files,…

Paper expense

You probably have two or three copies of each document distributed in different spaces of your practice for different reasons, or for practicality. Reducing papers eliminates this duplication because digital files in the cloud are available from anywhere and at any time. This reduces paper expense and is much more environmentally friendly.

Storage

More than 25% of your office is occupied by your documents. This is a large amount of space and prevents you from dedicating it, for example, to expanding your team.

Productivity

It’s difficult to find a specific document among hundreds of them. Finding it can mean a great loss of time. In contrast, a good document storage system with a powerful search engine can help you find what you need much more quickly, effectively and productively.

Printing costs

The cost of paper, ink, printers, maintenance and other associated expenses can be large, especially for a small practice. It’s an expense you can drastically reduce.

Concentration

A disorganized desk full of papers isn’t the best space to think clearly, logically and focused. Rather the opposite.

You can reduce the amount of paper you use and save money doing so.

The 3 big challenges of abandoning paper

Before drastically reducing paper, you have 3 big challenges to overcome:

1. The large amount of papers to digitize

Whether you choose to scan all documents in the office or hire this service from an external company, there’s a lot of work to do. The process takes time, especially when there are staples or clips in the way. Don’t underestimate the resources you’ll need. It’s essential to do a good job. When your documents are scanned, life will be much better for you and your team.

2. The necessary expense deters many practices

Document scanning and destruction companies charge a price for their services, it’s true. But if you decide to do it in your office with your collaborators, you’ll also have expenses such as buying a good scanner, training your employees and of course the actual hours they’ll dedicate to scanning. The benefit anyway is enormous. When you start working paperless, you’ll wonder how you could work any other way.

3. Team resistance

Work processes are always complicated to modify. Some members of your team (there are always some) may show reluctance to modify their way of working. It’s the typical situation where the phrase “This is how we’ve always done it” comes to light. Well, this isn’t a reason not to make the change.

Anyway, keep in mind that forcing your collaborators isn’t a good strategy. The best thing is to explain very well the benefits of drastically reducing papers. Ask them for their ideas and suggestions. Then agree with them on deadlines that allow time for a calm adaptation.

Find a strategy that works in your practice

Each practice is different, so only you can choose the right strategy for your business. Below you’ll find some ideas that can help you take the step:

Use the cloud

Don’t store scanned documents on a USB drive or hard drive. Guarantee their security by using cloud storage services. Services like Dropbox, Box or Google Drive itself can be very useful.

Create a logical document structure

Don’t put all documents in the same folder. Create a structure of folders and subfolders that then allow managing and finding documentation efficiently. For example, a folder for each year and each client.

Avoid duplication whenever possible

It’s often difficult to be sure that two documents are identical, but if you know for certain, don’t waste time scanning both.

Put a date on the calendar

Agree with your partners and team on a specific date to become a paperless practice. Add it to the calendar and make sure everyone has it clearly in mind.

Find the ideal time on the calendar

While you’re in the paper elimination process, this will inevitably have an impact on the practice’s productivity. Try to find a time of year when there’s less work, such as September. Don’t try it at year-end or in July. You can also consider hiring temporary staff to do this task.

Be meticulous with metadata

Metadata is the information or words you use to describe each scanned document. You must ensure that each document has correct metadata. It’s key to locating documents later when they’re digitally archived. For example, you can add the date, client name or document type in its description.

Train your team

The better you train your team, the better quality your document archive will have later and it will be easier to find information in the future. Help them understand and assimilate the new system and you’ll see great results.

Scan only the essential

Scanning everything can be tempting, but an excess of useless information will later complicate document management, storage and location. Scan only necessary documents.

Starting to scan 20 years of documents isn’t the best idea. You can start with this year’s documents or those from the last two years and then, if you consider it necessary, scan older documents.

Stopping paper use is a continuous process

When you’ve managed to reduce paper to a minimum, your practice will be much more organized and efficient, but papers will continue to arrive so make sure the digitization process keeps working.

You can also talk to your suppliers and clients to try to reduce the papers they send you by recommending FacturaDirecta.

A paperless office will give your practice an important competitive advantage. So take the necessary time to plan your strategy and enjoy the benefits of reducing paper to the maximum.