It’s one thing to make the decision to convert all the records and/or documents in your office. After you’ve made the decision to go paperless, most businesses come to a realization that they have A LOT more documents than they thought they did for their scanning project.
Faced with a mountain of documents that need scanning, you finally come to an understanding and the realization that It can take days, even weeks, to get documents scanned.
We want to help you with some ways to properly prepare your documents before turning on the scanner, or handing them over to a document scanning service.
Here’s a list of steps to make the daunting process of scanning years worth of documents quicker and easier.
5 Ways to Streamline Your Document Scanning Project Before it Starts
1) Go through every document and remove staples, paper clips, tape, or any other material that binds sheets together
Some companies will do this for you, but doing it yourself as you’re organizing your documents will save a lot of time. The end goal is to ensure that all pages are separate before you begin scanning. This not only makes it easier and faster to scan each page, but it also ensures that no pages get skipped.
2) Be very careful how you use tape
The only time tape should be used is when you have items such as plane tickets, receipts, business cards, and other such items that need to be scanned. Tape these items in the middle of a sheet of paper, and only tape them on one side of a sheet of paper – never both sides. It’s too easy to forget to scan both sides, and the paper will be awkward and heavy if you tape items to each side of it.
3) If your documents have any folds, the pages need to be straightened out
Any of the information in the folded section will not be scanned, so make sure that all parts of the page that contain valuable information is visible- and bent corners should be taken care of too.
4) Organize your thoughts, and your documents
Arrange every document you’re planning to scan in the order that you would like to have them indexed. By doing this you streamline the process, which will make the entire conversion go a little faster. It’s a lot easier to plan this out ahead of time instead of trying to do it while you’re scanning. That way, you don’t have to re-organize the files once you have everything scanned.
If you index things properly, this might not be as critical, but making sure the right documents are in similar categories will help– especially If you have an employee or scanning service scanning documents for you,
5) Some scanners allow multiple pages to be fed into the machine at once, while others will only accept one page at a time
Before you start, you need to determine the scanner’s limitations and do a test run to see how long each document takes to scan. Make batches that match the scanner’s limits ahead of time, keeping all of them in the proper order.
While the above steps are mostly common sense, having them in front of you will help streamline your document scanning project by reducing the time it takes to prepare your documents for scanning. Don’t forget that a professional scanning service will help you through every step of the process to make the transition from paper documents to digital as painless as possible.
Document Scanning Services for any industry
Our record and document scanning expertise bridges a variety of industries, including, but not limited to:
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Legal Offices, Practices, and Departments
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Healthcare, Private Practices, Hospitals, and Insurance Companies
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Human Resources Offices
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Construction, Manufacturing, and Real Estate
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Government Agencies and Departments
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Financial Institutions, Financial Planners, and the Financial Industry
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Educational Sector (Colleges, Schools, Admissions)
We’re here to get you a customized quote for your project, regardless of the scope. Click here to visit our services page to learn more about the options our contractor network provides.
Get Free, No-Hassle Quotes on Document Scanning Today!
From Document Scanning to Records Storage, our experts will help you select a customized Document Management Solution that fits exactly what you’re looking to do for your company.
We have locations all across the United States to serve your needs. To get started, fill out the form to the right, or give us a call at (866) 385-3706. Within minutes of receiving your request, you will have free quotes from experts in your area that can help you.
