We are already sixteen years into the 21st century. You would think that most businesses have achieved the goal of having paperless offices. But, the reality is that we all still have piles of paperwork and documents on our desks. And behemoth filing cabinets still take up valuable floor space in our offices.
Does that paint a familiar picture at your company? If so, don’t worry because you’re not alone! The good news is that you can take just a few simple steps to have less paperwork to deal with! Want to know how to do that? Follow my advice below and you too can start to have a greener and clutter-free office. You can even grow your business quicker by cutting back on admin time and costs with these tips:
Opt for electronic versions of official paperwork
These days, you can receive invoices, bank statements and more in an electronic format. Some service providers even offer their customers a discount by going paperless! Aside from the cost savings to you, it means you will have less paper in your office.
The brilliant thing about electronic documents is you can store them digitally. And you can do so by saving them locally on your PC or a network server. Many companies decide to save such documents on a secure cloud storage facility. That means they can access those files from anywhere in the world and at any time.
From a tax point of view, PDFs are acceptable forms of documentation and evidence.
Stop using paper notebooks and start using software
It surprises me even today that many businesses use paper-based systems for recording data. I’ve even seen some companies using those old-fashioned ledger books for their accounting procedures!
We live in the 21st century. Everyone uses computers these days. It’s time to start embracing technology and start using software! For example, your HR department could use employee holiday management software. And your sales department can use CRM systems between all staff to track leads.
There is no need to write down notes on paper or record important information in thick books. Use computers to store and organize your data—this way, you can have your personal paperless document manager to save your data securely.
Use cloud storage for sharing documents internally
Years ago, the common practice was to store files like documents and spreadsheets on a server. The trouble is, not everyone in a company would have access to the network. To get around the problem, people would often print out hard copies of those files.
Today, Internet access is pretty much universal. Even if you work in an area with no Ethernet connection, you can still use Wi-Fi. And when there is no network infrastructure available, there is always mobile data.
Regardless of how you connect to the Internet, cloud storage is a versatile facility. Desktop, laptop and mobile users alike can all access the same internal documents.
And it doesn’t matter where they are from a physical perspective. Cloud storage is especially useful to people that travel around a lot for work.
One of the advantages of cloud storage, apart from the high levels of security, is the cost. It’s even affordable to set up “private” cloud servers. There really is no excuse for not using the cloud.
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