31 May in Business trends

Paper to PDF: Which Documents Should You Digitize?

Nowadays, going paperless is a top priority for many organizations and individuals for a multitude of reasons. With this being such a popular trend, the question that comes to mind is: which documents should you digitize?

The trend to digitize documents is an eco-friendly, paperless solution which decreases the absurd amounts of paper usage taking place in offices all over the world. But, there are many other reasons for digitizing documents. Besides saving trees, by digitizing documents you will be able to save money, time, space, and ensure that your important documents can be stored, archived, and secured.

With tools such as scanners, document management software (Soda PDF comes to mind!), and Optical Recognition Software, it has never been easier to digitize documents. You can make virtual copies of practically any paper document, photo, or book that you have at hand. But which documents should you digitize right away? We have the answers for you!

Table of Contents

Why Digitize Documents?

You’ve probably heard this all before, but for those who haven’t, there’s a multitude of benefits to digitizing your documents! Trading in your paper for PDF allows you to:

Save time
Save space
Reduce costs
Archive documents for long-term preservation
Set passwords and restrictions on documents to ensure security
Store documents for easy retrieval
Search & Annotate documents
Track changes
Save trees

The list goes on and on! For a more in depth look at the benefits of digitizing documents, as well as how to create a more paperless environment, you can check out our blog post on “5 Quick Steps to a Paperless Office.”

If you’re looking for the right tools to digitize documents, you can check out our post on “The 6 Best Photo Scanners for Businesses of 2018” to find the right scanner for you. You can also download Soda PDF so that you can edit, save, secure, and share your documents after they have been scanned. Soda PDF also offers OCR technology, which recognizes the text within scanned documents and photos so it can be edited, saved, and stored.

Which Documents to Digitize?

Considering the long list of benefits of digitizing paper documents, ideally, every document would be digitized. But for those who don’t want to spend the night scanning every old family photo, then it may be helpful to have guidelines.

When you’re thinking about which documents to digitize, you should ask yourself:

Is the document replaceable?
How important is this document?
How long do I want to preserve this document?
What happens to my business/ personal affairs if I lose this information?
What happens if someone else accesses this information?

There are also certain types of documents that you should digitize for several reasons:

Contracts

Contracts may contain important information and guidelines about the terms of an employee’s responsibilities and rights, or the guidelines of an agreement with a customer. This is generally information that an organization should preserve and store so that it can be easily accessed. Keeping a virtual copy also makes it easier to make and track changes.

Contracts generally require signatures, which are not always easy to get in person. Sometimes signers may be international, or some contracts may require signatures in a certain amount of time. Use Soda PDF E-Sign to create documents and send them to be electronically signed. Electronic signatures are just as legally binding as their paper equivalents, and are easy to retrieve and save. You can also save drafts of unsigned documents, as well as archive signed ones.

Documents Containing Sensitive Information

Some documents contain extremely personal or private information that you wouldn’t want anyone else to access. When you create virtual copies, you can set passwords on documents so that they cannot be accessed by unwanted guests. Set certain restrictions so that the information cannot be edited, saved, or copied. For more information on securing PDF documents, check out our blog post on “Password & Security Restrictions.”

Documents that Require Collaboration

It isn’t always easy when several collaborators need to work on one document at the same time. You can’t have everyone all in one place, leaning over a sheet of paper. It also isn’t easy to make changes to a paper document, if needed. Having a digital copy of a document makes it easy to share and work on the same the document at once. Individuals can work on a virtual document, save it to a cloud storage service, send it off, and have someone else work on it. Other collaborators can add comments and annotations, make changes, and send it back instantly.

You can also track any changes made in the document, as well as save drafts. If you don’t want anyone altering your document, you can set restrictions so that other collaborators can only view or annotate the document, without the ability to actually edit it.

While the documents mentioned above are more general examples, we also have a list of some more specific documents which you should digitize! Of course, there are many more, but these are just a few.

Personal Documents

Birth Certificates
Social Insurance Cards
Marriage and Divorce documents
Wills and Trusts
Home, Car, & Life Insurance policies
Property deeds
Tax Returns
Passports (although scanned copies aren’t valid, it’s good to have a back-up)
Prescriptions and Medical records

Professional Documents

Customer & Employee contracts
Client lists
Partnership agreements
Financial records
Payroll records
Insurance policies
Profit or Sales reports
Health & Safety reports

There are so many reasons why you should digitize documents, and the process is now easier than ever before! So, what are you waiting for? Grab your scanner, download Soda PDF, and start modernizing the way that you manage your most important files.