Ditch the filing cabinet

It’s not just big businesses that have to manage paperwork – Nik Rawlinson finds it’s easy to digitise and manage documents in all sizes of company (and households)

- Nik Rawlinson

We may live in a digital age, but the typical household and small business still has to deal with stacks of paper. While many services now offer online bills and statements, there are plenty of important manuals, receipts, medical records, legal documents and so forth that come in physical form.

There's no reason they need to stay in that form. Bigger businesses reap the rewards of digital document management, and we can take advantage in both smaller businesses and at home. Converting your papers into a digital archive can save space, and when you need to refer back to a crucial document you can instantly find the information you need.

Going digital

If you already own a scanner then you can start digitising your paper documents right away. If you don’t, you don’t necessarily need to buy one: the free Microsoft Lens app lets you snap page images in seconds using your phone camera – including multi-page documents – and export them as PDFs. You can find it on Google Play or the iOS App Store. Another mobile option is Adobe Scan; this also lets you scan and save single pages for free, although its full PDF management and editing capabilities require a monthly subscription to fully unlock it.