The paperless office. Many people think it’s just a dream. But I still remember when I first realised it could be a reality. I was visiting a member of the Sydney Hills Business Chamber, and there was nothing on her desk except her computer – not even a pen.

That was the turning point for me.

Today, I’m sharing the journey of taking the Sydney Hills Business Chamber office paperless, and giving you some tips on how you can do it too!

Why did the chamber decide to go paperless?

There are plenty of reasons for any organisation to go paperless:

1. It saves time.

You’ll still need to spend some time filing. How much time depends on the complexity of your files and how long it takes to navigate to the right folder.

The real time saving is how fast you can retrieve documents when you need them. Electronic searches usually take less than 30 seconds to find what you want. And you can search everywhere! If something’s in the wrong place, you’ll find it. You might have stuff in your inbox, unfiled – the search will find it. If someone else did the filing and their logic doesn’t match yours, you can still find things.

And you won’t need to get up and walk over to the filing cabinet ever again.

2. It requires less storage.

Electronic files don’t take up physical space. The ink doesn’t fade. When one folder gets big, it doesn’t split. Or overflow the filing cabinet so you have to re-organise everything.

3. It costs less.

Before you file paper documents, you often have to print them. Printers aren’t very costly anymore, but the toner is.

4. It’s a fire hazard!

5. You’re actually more disorganised in your brain if your office is cluttered with “stuff”.

There was one more particularly important reason for the chamber to go paperless.

The chamber doesn’t have its own office space. It has space in an office, as part of a partnership.

This means storage is limited. Plus, you move office a lot, and you have to move everything. I know, because I’ve moved about four times since 2014. Even before deciding to go paperless, I would not print anything unless it was absolutely necessary. I would try not to keep paper at all, because it just added to the storage problem.

That’s how we started the journey towards going paperless.

What was the biggest challenge in going paperless?

The biggest challenge was how to do things efficiently at events.

Before COVID, the only things we printed were event registration lists, so that we could tick people off as they came in the door.

We used to print these before each event, then reconcile to the digital registration system afterwards.

We had tried taking this process digital years before, but our iPad was too slow to process the number of people attending.

Then COVID hit. People were bunching up at the door waiting to get their name ticked off and it just wasn’t safe. Eyob and his team at Icon Corporate Events had their own devices, so we bit the bullet and gave them logins for our system. That was how we ditched the last of the paper.

It’s so much more efficient now – and it means less work to do after the event as well.

Tips for going paperless

There are some documents you actually have to keep as paper, even if you also have a digital copy (which I recommend).

These include birth certificates, citizenship papers and so on. By law, you need the paper original.

There’s a list in the download, but do regularly check it as things change. Property title deeds for example just went electronic so there’s no need to keep those papers anymore. COVID has also accelerated the move to digital.

Keep this small number of important paper documents all together, where you can grab them easily if you have to evacuate your premises for any reason.

Find a solution for handwritten documents

You may prefer writing by hand to typing. Perhaps you’re a kinetic learner. You may just need a notebook where you jot things down over the course of the day.

If you have one notebook, that’s probably fine. But if you have lots of different bits of paper, you’ll never go paperless. There are a number of options:

• Scan them.
• Buy a Remarkable tablet or similar.
• Use the Notud app to handwrite notes direct onto your touch screen device.

Manage the maintenance

This is where the journey often becomes a challenge! While you’re going paperless, that doesn’t stop others sending you paper.

• Wherever possible, request documents electronically. Cut down the incoming paper.
• Have a manila folder where you store all your paper documents to file. Then make a regular time once a week to do your filing. For every piece of paper, make a decision on whether to keep, scan, shred or throw out. Only keep the really important ones!

It’s hard to begin with, but once you get into the habit, it’s easy. You just do it. Click here for a 4 step process.

Or you could get a VA to do it for you. I can help organise that. You will need a clear system so the VA knows what to do with each piece of paper.

Make sure you back up

Even if all your documents are in the cloud, you still need to back up. Even Google data centres have fires, or other problems. There’s a very small chance that it would affect you, but if you lost everything, you would be devastated.

Need more help or advice? I love everything about going paperless and I’m happy to chat. Book in a time!