Building a Paperless Office: 9 Best Practices for Small Businesses
If your office is still packed with filing cabinets and printed documents on desks, you already know how paper can create more work than it should.
Moving toward a more digital operation can reduce costs and speed up productivity across the whole office. It’s also so much more efficient when the team is working remotely.
But to transition well, you need to approach it as a business process project rather than just scanning every piece of paper and saving it in the cloud.
Here are nine ways you can build this process into your business.
1) Start with the WHY
Paper is everyone's problem. You pay for it, plus the toner, printers, and folders that it lives in. You also pay for the time that employees spend printing, filing, and looking for records.
A paperless approach reduces almost all of those expenses. It also makes everyday life a lot easier. When documents are digital, they’re easier to search for and share with the team. There are also better backups, so you’re safe in case of an office disaster.
All of those reasons give you more than enough data to prove the necessity of a paperless process. So whether you’re trying to convince higher-ups, your employees, or even yourself, this is a good place to start.
2) Audit your paper use and set a strategy
Do you know where most of your paperwork comes from? Or where the bottlenecks are happening?
In your paper audit, you should follow each document from the moment it’s created or received to where and when it’s printed, reviewed, filed, and eventually disposed. For example, if you receive an invoice during a delivery, and then:
- it’s placed on an employees desk,
- reviewed and signed by a manager,
- entered into your accounting software,
- filed in a cabinet,
- and finally moved to an off-site storage space.
That’s a lot of steps that open the document up to risks of getting damaged or lost before the vital information is even captured. But it’s also the perfect place to start removing manual steps.
You can separate your documents into categories of what you digitize immediately, what can be done later, what should stay in physical paper form, and what can be disposed of securely.
3) Find a document management system that fits your business
The perfect DMS needs to solve your actual problems. You might need full-text search or better version control. Maybe the team is asking for automated workflows and access permissions.
Usually, cloud-based software is the most attractive to small businesses because they don’t need dedicated servers and internal maintenance. And they make documents available to authorized employees regardless of where they’re working. To safeguard off-site connections, companies often pair these systems with a P2P VPN.
But if you’re a business owner with specific infrastructure, security, or regulatory requirements, then an on-premise system might just make more sense.
4) Figure out your formats
Paperless can mean many different things, because digital files come in various formats. And one mistake small businesses make is not putting their preferred formats into a ‘rulebook’ for the company from the start. Because then you end up with Harry using Word documents and Melinda using PDFs and that creates a whole new cycle of process problems.
The format you choose will depend on how your business runs, but often PDF is the most secure and efficient way to do it. They’re harder to accidentally edit, and can be opened on almost any device without losing their foundational layout and look.
It’s also quite simple to change PDFs into other formats, or edit them when needed, using SmallPDF and other online PDF editing software.
A smart move, though, would be to add in training for your team so that they all know how to convert ODT to PDF online, for example. And once you ensure that everyone is aware of the company’s default format, and how to work in that format, you have a smoother process overall.
5) Cut the unnecessary steps
It’s normal, when working with paper, for approvals and workflows to feel way more complicated than they need to be. But when you’re working in the digital space, you get to remove a lot of unnecessary steps that are part of an archaic process.
For example, digital tools can automatically send a document to the right person at the right step, so there’s no need for documents to pass through a bunch of people first. These tools can also send reminders if documents are waiting to be signed or approved, and record the exact moment they are approved.
This brings in more accountability, but also opens up the chance to cut down on how many people really need to approve a simple expense or order. And in the process, your team’s time is freed up.
So while setting up your paperless office, be sure to audit the number of times a document is currently being received by different people, how many eyes are on each document, and where you could realistically reduce those numbers.
6) Set up a single-access filing system
If you’re going paperless but everyone is still saving documents on their computer’s home screen, you may as well stick to using printed files.
You want your digital system to work so that everyone is able to access what they need without having to track it down through seven different people. With one central place that holds your files and documents, your whole team can easily find and file documents.
But before you open the system up to the team, make sure you share some basic rules around how it should be used. Like which folders should be added, how files should be named, and who has access to each area.
Just keep the structure simple enough for new employees to understand it early on, and employees who might not work in the system daily can navigate it without having to ask for help.
Add a rule about version control, too. If someone is uploading a new version, and you don’t need to keep track of every single change, they could delete the old version to reduce confusion. Everyone should try to keep everything in one place, not one version in the drive and another emailed, so no one really knows what to work off of.
7) Set up digital input systems wherever you can
Especially in the beginning, the best way to enforce a paperless office is to stop paper from entering your building at all, so to speak. In your audit, you’ll find any absolutely necessary areas to print and handle physical documents. But everything else should work digitally or not at all.
Here are some ways you can make the switch immediately:
Turn expense claims into digital submissions
Don’t ask your employees to bring receipts and fill out a paper form when they need an expense reimbursement. Add a digital form to your shared drive and let them fill that out, with an automated submission option.
This can include an upload of a photo of the receipt, with expense details. And then it’s sent directly to your finance department to be processed.
Move employee requests online
For all leave requests and internal forms, having a simple way to submit online is ideal for everyone involved. This also gives you the opportunity to direct them to the right managers and keep proper records of everything. The same digital approach can also be useful for research-heavy tasks, where employees may need to pay for research paper assistance while keeping drafts and supporting documents in one place.
Reduce paper meeting materials
Even if your meetings are all done in person, there are digital tools that can help with this and avoid all of the paper piles in the meeting room.
Don’t encourage the practice of printing out presentations for everyone in the room when they could receive an email instead. And you can set up a meeting note taker and send these to everyone after the meeting.
Agendas can also be done online and that opens up the chance for multiple contributors to work on the same document. None of this works, though, if the update itself gets lost in someone's inbox. That's where a dedicated internal communications platform earns its keep, keeping announcements and requests visible instead of buried in email threads.
8) Double check your backup and recovery plan
Some people are afraid of relying on digital files too much, and that’s valid. Accidental deletion, ransomware, and service outages are not impossible or even uncommon. And that’s worrying when you’re entrusting your most important documents with an online system. For businesses managing sensitive or business-critical information, an enterprise data security platform can provide additional protection through features such as access controls, immutable backups, and recovery capabilities. Don’t just assume that backups are happening, check this often and make sure that the format is usable.
Which is why backups are so important. You should know that backups are happening regularly — how often would depend on when your documents are uploaded and updated — and be able to find them in case you need them. Don’t just assume that backups are happening, check this often and make sure that the format is usable.
At the same time, there should be a record of who has access to which files and folders. And when employees leave the company, access should be revoked.
9) Review your paperless system regularly
Once you have your ideal paperless office, unfortunately it’s not an eternal fix. You will have to review its efficiency every six months or so, to make sure there aren’t any bottlenecks coming up.
There also might be new things to add to the process, and learned experience to include in the rulebook.
Check whether there’s any employees still handling large amounts of paper, and dig into why. See if the new process has improved productivity or if there are new issues holding up everyone’s time. Teams that regularly work with operational data may also benefit from basic data-analysis skills, whether through internal training or an online statistics course, so employees can better understand the numbers behind these decisions..
Also review the software and tools you’re using in this process. Don’t be afraid to change things if they’re not working. This is a continuous process, but one that’s worth the effort.
Prioritize a paperless office for better productivity
Paperless is not a new idea. But it is becoming more obvious that it works better than physical documents.
There are so many benefits, and a whole new world of features and options that make it easier to manage your time and work. You also have much more control over where documents are and what is happening with them daily.
Don’t overwhelm yourself with the thought that every piece of paper needs to leave your office immediately. But if paperless is the goal, the best time to start is right now.
