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Thread ID: 69455	2006-06-02 04:20:00	Paperless office nutter	Thomas01 (317)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
459959	2006-06-02 04:20:00	I must be a real nutter. Recent publicity about some firms who have decided to go the paperless office route has got me interested. I have in fact scanned all my old photographs - about 2000 odd prints and nearly 1000 slides and found it easier than I expected. BUT:- I am determined to get my junk storage units (ie filing cabinets) under control and its proving harder than I expected. I did reckon some very hard working person could probably scan 1000 sheets in a week of very hard work. That is probably what my cabinet holds. I think I was an optimist, the main advantage so far is that I have shredded masses of useless saved junk. I wonder if anybody else has tried this exercise and with what results. I am talking about recently. Tom	Thomas01 (317)
459960	2006-06-02 05:56:00	Images are fine. Been there done that and now I use a digital camera. A difficulty I can see right now with the paperless office is with documents. If you scan them they turn into an image and you will not be able to search text via the computer. To turn images of Docs into readable text you will need to run them through an OCR program such as Omnipage. Filing documents may be an issue as well. At the moment I produce an Invoice via an Excel template. I print a copy and give it to the customer. This gets saved (as) Fred Nurk 20060603 in a sub directory called Invoices. When paid the invoice is transferred to Paid Invoices. Totals from various sources get transferred to a different spreadsheet. This works well for me figuring cash flow, profit etc. OTOH my business is hardly Microsoft or Telecom. I have to keep invoices from suppliers otherwise how can I convince the IRD of costs for parts etc. No "paperless" office here. OK for me but then others may vary.	Sweep (90)
459961	2006-06-02 08:02:00	lol, sounds like when I was working with Probation a few years ago. This was like 1999-2000. They said they'll be going paperless. It never happened. Their paperwork has now tripled. Coz, even if they put whatever on computer, they still have to keep records or whatever on paper anyway.	Speedy Gonzales (78)
459962	2006-06-02 09:09:00	lol, sounds like when I was working with Probation a few years ago. This was like 1999-2000. They said they'll be going paperless. It never happened. Their paperwork has now tripled. Coz, even if they put whatever on computer, they still have to keep records or whatever on paper anyway. My point too. If it isn't on paper it never happened as far as the IRS is concerned. Which is why, when I pay my bills, I get a receipt.	Sweep (90)
459963	2006-06-03 00:50:00	Some good points made. I don't see the neccessity of using OCR programs because the existing files of course can only be read by me and not the computer - so me reading images on screen is just as good as me reading a piece of paper. In fact where I have already done some work I find it a great deal easier to find things now. My filing on the computer is better than my filing in the cabinet - more organised. And as I am using ACD22v3.5 I can even add captions to the images (I haven't so far). Another advantage is that paper does tend to go missing and end up in the wrong place. But I do wonder about the legal implications. IRD doesn't bother me - retired -but how about the paper work for my new laptop - camera etc. Would Noel Leemings accept my print outs or would they insist on the original paperwork. Probably NL would accept them but very small traders may not. The legal implications should get some legal types giving their interpretation. But in normal English please!! Funny I still have some early books on computers where the paperless office was regarded as a certainty. Tom	Thomas01 (317)
459964	2006-06-03 23:46:00	The paperless office is a joke. The Housing Corporation (now Housing NZ) moved to paperless in 1990. All letters and docs were scanned - then destroyed. The result? A mess. The stuff simply disappeared, and the project was quietly dropped. We have more paper rubbish today than we had 20 years ago. I think many people print out emails, docs etc, and then bin them whereas in the past it would have been filed and referred to. Computer filing is a wonderful thing but it requires a consistant and disciplined structure. Everyone needs to use the same filing rules in an office, otherwise time gets wasted doing searches for misfiled info.	Winston001 (3612)
459965	2006-06-04 00:12:00	but it requires a consistant and disciplined structure. But it was always so. One extremely large organisation I worked for before computerisation had specialist (life time) indexing and sorting clerks. When approached to locate a file they seemed to respond to instinct and certainly used options that were not evident on the file name. The problems with computers are that they lack the ability to "think" laterally as the old clerks did. :2cents:	Scouse (83)
459966	2006-06-04 03:09:00	The paperless office is a joke. The Housing Corporation (now Housing NZ) moved to paperless in 1990. All letters and docs were scanned - then destroyed. The result? A mess. The stuff simply disappeared, and the project was quietly dropped. We have more paper rubbish today than we had 20 years ago. I think many people print out emails, docs etc, and then bin them whereas in the past it would have been filed and referred to. Computer filing is a wonderful thing but it requires a consistant and disciplined structure. Everyone needs to use the same filing rules in an office, otherwise time gets wasted doing searches for misfiled info. I print the odd Email but very few. I defintely print all Bank transactions. All paper is kept as needed or wanted. No paperless here.	Sweep (90)
459967	2006-06-04 06:50:00	Paperless can work fine in the appropriate environment. It just needs to be used in way that suits the needs of the company/office. I've seen it being used and it suits the company fine. It is not perfect, but does all that is required of it and has been beneficial all round. It is also supposed to be paperless and not papernone ;)	Jen (38)
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