Scanners, the cloud and paperwork

[NigelW]

Hi Guys

May seem a bit strange to be posting this question on a property forum but... the Savvy IT quotient on this board is pretty high and property investors seem to have a heap of paper to manage...I know I do.

(I will search and ask elsewhere but very interested in the experiences and views of those here!)

So my question is this - what's the best solution for scanning, storing and retrieving documents in the cloud. And what's the best cloud storage service in your experience.

What's the best high-speed duplex scanner that doesn't cost thousands?

I've had a play with dropbox, box.net, evernote (which I guess is a bit different). They each have some limitations and benefits...

I vaguely recall either Sim or Rolf saying they scan everything then put it in a box by date order (as a manual back up).

I don't want to store much, if anything, on a local computer/drive other than as a backup. Want to be able to search and access the docs with low capacity devices like smartphone, tablet etc.

The key thing is I would like a comprehensive search function. I don't want to have to spend hours at the computer filing, tagging, sorting etc...

Asking too much?

Thanks for any guidance you have.

Cheers
N

 

[moyjos]

I have had a real quick play with shoeboxed.com.au.

I was looking something to Intergrate into quickbooks but it didn't work for me.

I am still looking an option as well. Papersave.com was promising but also didnt work with the aus version of QB

 

[Jamie M]

I like dropbox - it runs well on all my PC, laptop and mobile devices and the storage limits are pretty generous.

You could use a smart phone for scanning documents and then upload the file into the cloud system.

For instance, with the iPhone, you can use camscanner for scanning docs and then upload the PDF's directly into your dropbox. I'm sure there are other apps that work like this as well.

Cheers

Jamie

 

[sh710]

I was asking similar questions a year or two ago then I ended up using the following combination:

1. A scanner - can be multi-function or standalone scanner it doesn't need to be an expensive one but preferably a flatbed with document feeder as well so it's easier to scan multiple pages.
2. scanner software with OCR - I use a Mac and I paid about $20 for the software, I'm sure there're cheaper or even free software out there if you're using a PC but I would recommend spending a bit of money to get a good one so you can do things such as cropping, selective save...etc
3. Google Docs(Drive) - The scanned documents are saved in PDF format but because the OCR has already been done, once you upload the document onto Google Docs, the text inside the document are searchable.

I do admit that the process is manual and I'm sure there're plenty of small start-up out there that does everything once you logged onto their website but they're usually charge a monthly fees depending on the storage requirement and you just don't know how long they will last, whereas I'm pretty confident that Google is gonna be around for a while The other added advantage of using Google Docs is that sharing a document with someone else is very easy and a lot of other apps also have the option to sync with Google Docs

If you don't purchase an OCR software, you can OCR the image that you scanned when you upload them into Google Docs but I found the accuracy of OCR in Google Docs was quite poor at the time and the document loses some of its original formatting as it is saved as a image within a Google Word document with the OCR text underneath it

 

[Rolf Latham]

Hi Guys

May seem a bit strange to be posting this question on a property forum but... the Savvy IT quotient on this board is pretty high and property investors seem to have a heap of paper to manage...I know I do.

(I will search and ask elsewhere but very interested in the experiences and views of those here!)

So my question is this - what's the best solution for scanning, storing and retrieving documents in the cloud. And what's the best cloud storage service in your experience.

What's the best high-speed duplex scanner that doesn't cost thousands?

I've had a play with dropbox, box.net, evernote (which I guess is a bit different). They each have some limitations and benefits...

I vaguely recall either Sim or Rolf saying they scan everything then put it in a box by date order (as a manual back up).

I don't want to store much, if anything, on a local computer/drive other than as a backup. Want to be able to search and access the docs with low capacity devices like smartphone, tablet etc.

The key thing is I would like a comprehensive search function. I don't want to have to spend hours at the computer filing, tagging, sorting etc...

Asking too much?

Thanks for any guidance you have.

Cheers
N

I will leave the software to the sw geeks

We store all our stuff on our in house server with restricted VPN access, so no issues finding stuff

we run Avision C 220 C2 scanners, bullet proof and even loan processor proof : )

for mobility I have a cute little Canon 150, which is duplex and only needs usb power.

hate paper, BUT NCCP makes it harder unless you have a really good end to end soln

ta
rolf

 

[Sim]

I used shoeboxed.com.au to catch up on a backlog of non-A4 sized receipt scanning, but now I'm caught up, I've stopped using the service. I didn't need their database functionality - I just wanted someone to do the scanning for me.

I use a sheet-feed duplex scanner to scan anything A4 into PDF format. I've had the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 recommended to me - but I've not used it myself (mine is considerably older).

For anything not A4-sized, I use CamScanner on my Android phone or tablet.

For syncing between multiple computers and accessing online or on mobile devices, Dropbox is as good as anything, but don't rely on it as your only backup source - I also use Crashplan to backup my documents to multiple locations.

I also use Evernote to store all miscellaneous documents (eg, letters), the ability to OCR scanned PDF files is useful for searching.

Anything which is regular (eg statements or receipts for regularly purchased items/services), I store in PDF files on my local machine (could be in Dropbox if you need access from multiple devices). I find it easier to locate documents in a folder structure on my file system with the individual files named "YYYYMMDD - description.pdf", so they automatically sort in chronological order.

Everything else irregular goes in Evernote.

 

[jrc77]

Nigel,

There was a good thread recently where Sim posted what he did. That inspired me to have a go.

I am in the process of going paperless. I had a multi function printer/scanner/fax which was too slow for mass scanning and tended to get jammed when doing duplex copies (did a two pass duplex). I have now bought a Fujitsu SnapScan 1500 which is a one pass duplex scanner and I am very happy with it. It does approx 20 pages per minute and churns through the paper. It is very good at recognizing overlapped pages as well (I had this problem with my MFP scanner - pages would stick together and one would be missed). Pages still stick occasionally with the SnapScan but it identifies it and stops the scan process so you can rectify it.

I've got it setup with a couple of different profiles and basically do one button scanning.

I am currently scanning, doing OCR and importing into Evernote where I can use the search facilities and tag/indexing to organize the information. I have about 2000 documents in there so far. When I get around to it I am intending to write some code to inspect the PDF documents in Evernote to try and give them nicer names based on the file content (attempt to extract document dates and company names eg.).

I also use CamScanner+ on my mobile phone to take photos of receipts and send these straight to Evernote as well - although I find the OCR doesn't work well in CamScanner and the quality is better if I scan the receipts at home.

I did the trial with Shoeboxed however was not convinced - so have gone down my own scanning path. One issue that might of got me interested was if they provided a way to mass export the scanned PDFs with meaningful file names - they only provide an export function for individual PDF's to file, or mass PDF's into one merged PDF file. There were a lot of other export options for various programs (including Evernote).

Regards,

Jason

 

[knightm]

this is a great thread and Im ashamed to say Im very early in the learning curve on this front and have filed everything paper up until now.

Slowly moving to Mac computers and will in next 6-12 have iphone. I was wondering if I could get away without buying a scanner and just use the iphone app? Scannerpro or similar.

I assume the OCR is so you dont need to bother carefully naming the files? I hadn't thought of that. I would just have named with a consistent convention including subject and date.

Wasnt sure if saving locally (with time machine loading regularly as back up) would be ok.

 

[Terry_w]

I have used a few different scanners and have problems with the PDF files being too large. Many are more than 20MB and cannot be emailed. I tried reducing the quality of the scan etc, but only helps marginally.

Does anyone know a way to reduce the size of a PDF?

 

[knightm]

Does anyone know a way to reduce the size of a PDF?

Terry if you use the software that came with the scanner try going into the preferences or settings and see if you can set the default quality lower...hard to say without knowing the software u are using.

 

[Aaron_C]

Does anyone know a way to reduce the size of a PDF?

If you are using Adobe Acrobat X then you can go to File -> Save as -> Reduced Sized PDF.

 

[jrc77]

TerryW,

The software that comes with my scanner has a compression option in the settings - I run it with maximum compression to try and keep the PDF file size down.

I scanned 166 pages of old credit card statements into one file - and it was 24.9 mB total. How many pages are you scanning into one document?

Regards,

Jason

 

[NigelW]

Does anyone know a way to reduce the size of a PDF?

No doubt you've tried this already but what about using something like WinZip etc to compress the file?

From memory pdf's don't seem to compress too well...but perhaps worth a try?

ps. thanks everyone for your thoughts on this. Still pondering and researching.

pps. without wanting to derail this thread as a devoted PC man (better half is a Mac!) I'm also pondering the whole Microsoft Surface vs ipad (or iPad mini) or Nexus 7 or maybe even Samsung galaxy tab 7 or the 5" note.

Any experiences with Android to add to all this?

I do REALLY love my spreadsheets which suggests a windows 8 tablet would be better but... ipads are so cool.