Bob Parrish C PA. P.C.
A Professional Corporation 

Paperless Office

Telephone — 
FL 941/387-0926
TX 915/367-3465

Fax— 
FL 941/387-0823
TX 915/367-3465

Email: pro1040@home.com On the Web: www.pro1040.com

Consultant & CPA For
Individuals
Shareholders
Partners
LLC Members
Beneficiaries
Trustees & Estate
Administrators
Sole Proprietors

Simply to Help —Helping You
To Keep More Of What You
Earn and Helping You To
Protect What You Keep

  - Help To Keep Your Life In Balance

  Engagement Status Letter ~ WARNING!

Disclaimer and Warning - From Bob Parrish CPA, P.C.

Hints About Moving To Paperless

Although it may be impossible to have a paperless office, here are some suggestions to help you get closer.

Determine What Generates The Bulk of The Paper:  You should determine first whether the bulk of the paper you deal with is generated outside your office or from within your own office.  

You may discover the paper generated within your office can be reduced without purchasing software or hardware, simply by using what you have in your existing computer system and training you and your staff to use new work habits that will reduce the amount of paperwork.  All your computer applications store the data on your computer - use a local area network and file that data in a standard location that your entire office can access.  If your work product uses many different types of applications for which you assemble the output into a presentation to your client, then a scanner is suggested.  The Scanner is covered a little later.

If your paperwork is mostly generated outside your office, then you must find a method to store the paper on your own computer.  Next you must decide what type of format you receive.  Do you receive a great number of faxes, email, paper copies, telephone call notes, notes about meetings or conferences?  Paper that is generated by fax can be handled very well - see the note about faxes, later.  Paper copies other than fax can be converted in multiple methods.  If those sending you paper can send it to you in electronic format, have them do so where it is reasonable to make such a request.  Otherwise one should purchase a scanner to manage that paperwork load.  You may discover that much of the paperwork can be reduced by using a database - the database may not be your only answer but may help.  Ask Bob Parrish CPA about a program he uses - Management Control Center. 

 Scanning:  The most useful choice will be one with an Automatic Document Feeder and runs at a high speed.  15 page per minute scanners can be found for a few hundred dollars - Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard - less than $600 for a SCSI, 15 ppm, color scanner with most of the software you will need.  Color is a very nice addition if you can afford a color scanner.  Software for the scanner should produce files in jpg, gif, tiff, pdf, htm and scan to a format your word processor can open.

Network Faxing:  Integrate inbound and outbound faxing to your network. Cheyenne, now owned by Computer Associates, makes a product called FaxServe that runs on an NT server. Incoming documents can be routed directly to recipients. They can discard junk faxes without ever printing them and save client-related matters to the network hard drive. Word processing documents can be faxed directly from the desktop without printing them. And the fax on the recipient's end looks much better since it was never put through a fax machine.  Most computers sold today already have a fax/modem installed.  Usually you will have fax software already on your computer - try that before purchasing additional software.  In our firm, we use Microsoft Outlook.  It works well for faxing and email.  It uses a common address book for email and faxes.  Incoming faxes are stored in Outlook as are the email.  If you have a small organization this may be the choice.  If on the other hand you have multiple fax lines, and would like the software to automatically route the incoming faxes to the recipient then you need to look at other products including MS Exchange Server.  Most of the fax programs will allow you to save the fax in  a format that is common to other programs or can be converted.  For example, using Outlook a fax received can be converted to tiff format simply by using the Imaging program that came with MS Windows open the fax with Imaging and Save As to save the fax in tiff format - save it to  your network data drive in the specific directory you those such as the client's dedicated directory.

Digital Sending:  Consider a digital-sending device. HP practically invented this category with the development of the 9100C Digital Sender. Documents are scanned into the 9100 and "sent" to a user on the network using a file format called PDF from Adobe. The magic here is that the scanner will scan documents in black & white or color.

When the document arrives at your desk, it is in a format that preserves the font, presentation, and full graphics. The test is fully word searchable, which is a terrific advantage since a user can search the document for the appearance of words. The software can locate a single word in a 200-page deposition in about 3 seconds! The PDF format is important because it can be printed out to look just like the original; it can be e-mailed to another location and arrive in the same format; it doesn't matter whether the recipient has a Mac or a PC because the format is universal. And the text can be exported, so something like a contract can be scanned, edited, and re-sent without laborious retyping.

Digital Copiers:  The new digital copiers can be connected to your hub or switch by a computer network cable.  Or - if you do not have a network connected to a computer.  Place the paper in the document feeder, select the scanning command and the papers are sent to you networked computer drive.  These copiers can create pdf files, scan in color or black and white, serve as a copier or serve as a printer.  The downside is composed of two main issues:

1. The price
2. Some may not support OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

If  you do need OCR for only a few jobs, then you can purchase a less expensive scanner to use for the OCR jobs.  If you use the digital copier and do not purchase the OCR with the unit, then your scanned files cannot be searched.

The upside - you will have a very fast scanner and a very fast printer.  The printer part of your new digital copier may print at 22 - 30 pages per minute, even with heavy graphics pages.  Compare this to 4 - 8 pages with most laser printers.  The scanner may scan at nearly the same rate.  Therefore you can have a "real work horse" but may have to make some concessions if price is a consideration for you.

Work Habits:  If you have MS Windows and more than one computer you already have nearly everything you need for a LAN, or Local Area Network.  You will need to add a network car or NIC (and many off the shelf computers have those today) and a hub or switch.  MS Windows 98, ME and 2000 PRO are already made for you to setup your network.  Decide where you want to store your client or customer files, and any other office files that should be available to your staff.  For example, your scanned files.  Decide what is better for your company - making a separate folder or directory for each client or storing those files by the type of document or some other classification.   Look at how you store your paper copy, then mimic that on the computer that you have chosen to store this information.  I will not cover how to share the computer, its files and its printer in this article.  I will tell you - do not be afraid of the process or the cost.  Hubs are the older technology and you probably will be able to find a hub for $50 - $80 to share as many as 8 computers.  The network interface can be found for $30 - $120.  You will need only one hub for up to either 4 or 8 computers, depending upon the hub's configuration and you will need one network interface card for each computer you want to connect.  The new location on your computer will now become your new digital "File Room".

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