The Paperless Home Office

1
The Paperless Home Office

• Ditching the File Cabinet

2
MYTH

• The Myth of the Paperless Office by Abigail
  Sellen and Richard Harper
• Companies going paperless without clear
  direction or culture change.
• Reading long documents, reviewing, and
  collaboration.
• Legal burdens.

3
Paperless Home Office

• Capture
• Archive
• Retrieval

4
The Process

• Make decisions on-the-fly.
• The daily toss.
• Weekly scanning.
• Scan, confirm, shred.
• Frequent Backups.
• Easy Retrieval.

5
Must-Have Tools!

• A Scanner
• Preferably one which can scan to a USB drive or
  media card.
• With a sheet feeder.
• A Shredder
• An External Hard Drive
• Adobe Acrobat Pro.
• Backup software and Search Software

6
Capture

• What to Keep in Hard Copy?
• Licenses and OSHA
• Medical/Veterinary
• Hard drive recovery procedures
• Big-ticket returnable/warranty purchases

7
Electronic Copies

• Taxes
• User Guides
• Receipts for Business
• Invoices to Clients
• Statements and Bills

8
Dont Keep

• User guides/Quick Starts
• Maps and directions
• Lists
• Grocery receipts
• Coupons
• Ads
• Magazines/Newspapers

9
Archive

• Store documents by
• Date (YYYY / MM)
• In Email (no need to sort)
• Type (Receipts/YYYY/MM)
• Project (Workbook/)
• Client (WebWorks/)

10
Hybrid Archives

• Type AND Date (Receipts/YYYY/MM)
• Client AND Type (Webworks/Contracts)
• Etc.
• Everything has a meaningful filename!
• Costco-HardDrive.pdf not Costco.pdf unless
  you only go there once or twice a year.

11
Retrieval

• Mac Spotlight
• Windows Google Desktop or Windows Desktop Search
• Linux locate and updatedb

12
Collaborate and Review

• CMS tools
• Word Markup
• Compare Documents
• This is where to use paper!

13
Reading Long Documents

• We do read online!
• Adobe PDFs
• eInk devices (Kindle, Sony)
• Audiobooks
• Other eBooks (phones, PDAs)

14
First Steps

• Take out your wallet or purse.
• Throw away anything you dont need.
• Scan/Shred the rest.
• Go forward, not back.
• Tackle the backlog in 10 minute increments over
  the next few weeks.

15
Questions/Help

• Stephanie Bryant
• Mortaine Publications, Inc.
• http//www.mortaine.com
• 605-413-4531
• stephanie_at_mortaine.com