Every year, it’s becoming more important to go paperless. Not only are paperless companies more productive and cost-efficient, but we can’t ignore the impact on the environment. According to the University of Colorado, people throw away enough paper each year to build a 12-foot high wall from New York to California!
As we transition from paper to digital documents, more document scanning is occurring than ever before. Unfortunately, this often leads to errors, repeated efforts, and poor record-keeping.
How to Avoid the Biggest Scanning Mistakes
We’ve compiled a list of the biggest mistakes office workers make when scanning documents so you won’t have to worry about your records in the future. #1 might surprise you!
5. Don’t Highlight Anything
It’s common for office workers to use highlighter pens to emphasize important information on a paper document. However, this can lead to huge problems down the road. For example, if you’re using a blue highlighter (or anything darker than a light yellow), you run the risk of completely obscuring that important information once it’s scanned.
Most scanners, especially black and white models, don’t work correctly on highlighted text. It will look like you spilled black ink on your file. You might be alright with a standard yellow highlighter, but do a test scan first. When in doubt, don’t highlight at all.
4. Don’t Use Staples
While it can seem like a waste of time to remove the staples from a multi-page document before scanning, it can also save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars in repair costs. Sandwiching metal staples against the glass surface of your scanner can cause scratches that will start to show up on all of your scans. If they get bad enough, you may have to replace your scanner.
Always play it safe by removing the staples before scanning. You can always replace the staples later, but you might not be able to fix the damage done to your scanner.
3. Clean Your Scanner!
Do your scanned documents end up looking smudged or dirty when you look at them on a computer? Do they have specks or lines that weren’t on the original? Then it’s probably time to clean your scanner.
Over time, dirt, toner, carbon, chemicals, and other debris can build up on your scanner. Fortunately, cleaning is a simple task. You can often buy cleaning kits either directly from the manufacturer of your scanner or an online seller.
2. Scanning Flipped Documents
It might surprise you how many digital files contain blank pages. The culprit is often a distracted employee who didn’t notice that the page was facing the wrong way when they scanned it! Human error is always going to be a factor, and with so many documents being scanned, those errors are likely to get worse.
You can help eliminate these simple mistakes by breaking up big scanning tasks into smaller chunks of time. Also, make sure you’re able to focus on the task at hand instead of talking to a coworker while you scan. These basic precautions will help ensure that you aren’t responsible for scanning the back of a page.
1. Not Having a Proper System
By far, the biggest mistake companies are making with their document scanning processes is that they don’t have a system for the electronic files. It doesn’t do any good to digitize your records only to lose track of them in a poorly organized system.
Fortunately, Go Find It can help.
With Turbo Owl, you can use our all-in-one barcode system to upload documents directly to specific clients or accounts. You can even store your uploaded documents in our data warehouse to save you the hassle of manually entering information. Our system even allows for bulk uploads of multiple documents so that jobs that used to take all day can be done in just minutes.
Upgrade Your Office Today
Don’t waste more time scanning your documents only to lose them to a chaotic electronic filing system. Organize your records with the innovative tools from Go Find It.
