Going Paperless

My wife and I have had the itch to go paperless for a few years now, but we did not have the time to invest to work through the complicated setup. We wanted to create a solution that would allow us to access any of our scanned documents individually anywhere we were. Most importantly this process had to be easy and convenient or we wouldn’t be diligent in using it.

We made a few attempts a few years back with our all-in-one printer/scanner. This was definitely not ideal and was very time consuming. We keep the majority of our computing accessories in the basement, so when using our all-in-one printer/scanner, we would have to walk down stairs, scan each page individually as it was a flatbed scanner without a document feeder, then process/organize the scanned images. As you might imagine this did not last long.

We wanted a fast scanner, that could scan multiple pages, both sides at once, and in a convenient location. News Flash: Speedy duplex scanners are NOT cheap. We were a little overwhelmed when we started to research our new scanner. We wanted to find the most convenient machine to help ensure the success of our system. Eventually we realized that we were going to have to pony up some change to achieve the convenience we were looking for. Enter the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500.

Why did we settle on the ScanSnap? We did a LOT of reading, and then did some more… This review at lawyerist.com sealed it for us. Again, we were looking for convenience, it has to work quickly and reliably, and this scanner does just that.

The next piece of the puzzle was how to store the scanned documents. We had already decided we wanted to utilize Evernote to organize our documents. We had also researched different strategies for automating the transfer of the documents from the scanner to Evernote. We installed the supplied driver application and Evernote version supplied on the CD. We updated the software immediately to the latest versions. We were pleasantly surprised to realize that the newest version of the ScanSnap software had Evernote integration BUILT RIGHT IN!

We created a new evernote account to house our scanned data. We did not use either of our existing individual accounts, we use the new account and share the notebooks from there to our individual accounts. This allows us to keep our personal notes in our own accounts, but still have access to our shared scanned data. We allow evernote to use its Optical Character Recognition (OCR) algorithms determine the text in each document. Now we can search our shared documents from the shared account or our individual accounts. My wife likes to be organized, so she moves the documents into categorized notebooks. I typically just search for what I’m looking for. Oh, did I mention they have apps as well?

I mentioned earlier, that my setup needed to be convenient. We currently use Windows Media Center for our DVR functionality, so we have access to a computer on/near our television. We chose to put the scanner next to the TV, so we have easy access to it while going through the mail. We scan the mail, and then toss it in the recycle bin or put it through the shredder.

In summary, we wanted a fast and convenient scanner for the backbone of our paperless solution, and the  Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 handles this assignment brilliantly. Evernote provides the features to handle the tasks we need after the ScanSnap has digitized our data. This is the solution that is working for us right now, but as always, your mileage may vary.